/IDs Minter <Bar^en 



ing paragraph in this curious history. The 

 pansies they lovingly tended so long ago 

 are now found blowing in waste places, 

 dwindled to mere specks of purple and 

 yellow, hardy yet pathetic descendants of 

 a royal ancestry. Nor should it be 

 offensive to remark that somehow the 

 Creoles themselves seem more beholden to 

 the past than to the present for a certain 

 fine charm of spirit and manner. There 

 is, indeed, a medieval bouquet haunting 

 the air in the vicinity of every French 

 cottage in the warm low country. Time 

 works a truly artistic deception by touch- 

 ing with lines of age the roof and walls, 

 the rude fences, and the rickety scup- 

 pernong arbors. Surely, you will think, 

 this place, with its gnarled fig-trees and 

 its moss-tapestried orange-orchard, dates 

 back into the days of chain-armor and 

 carven crossbows. It would hardly sur- 

 prise one to see Friar Tuck fill up the 

 cabin's ,low front door with his massive 

 body and genially truculent face. 



The little lady who presides in the Winter 

 Garden has a theory assuming that what- 

 17 



