Some healthy
hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in
fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on
Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in
life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of
light,--will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate,
looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist'
Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor
of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does
know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this
summer,--that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial
atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be
cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they
have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in
showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly's shiny
sides against the "Government beastesses," in talking of the giant red
beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich garden-mould.
"Yer've no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf,
I'll bet!" Even the crimson trumpet-flower on the wall is "a _Virginny_
creeper, Sah!" But Bone learns something from them in exchange.
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