And oh, the sweetness of the night and all things in it.  The solemn pulse of the great sea in Saut de Juan; the voices of many waters in the Gouliot Pass; the great dusky cushions of gorse studded with blooms that looked white under the moon; the mingling in the soft salt air of the scent of hedge-roses and honeysuckle, of dewy, trodden grass and the sweet breath of cows—­ay, even the smell of the pigsties was good that night, and mightily refreshing after the dark Everglades of Florida.

Aunt Jeanne’s hospitable door stood wide.  She kept open house that night, for the old observances were dear to her ever-young heart.  I walked right into her kitchen, and she met me with a cry of amazement and delight, and every wrinkle in the weather-browned face creased into a smile.

“Why, Phil, mon gars!  Is it possible?” she cried.  “You are welcome as one from the dead.  Though, ma fe, I hoped all along, as your mother did.  And, my good! what a big fellow it is!  And not bad-looking either!  I used to think you’d grow up square.  You were the squarest boy I ever saw.  But foreign parts have drawn you out like a ship’s mast.”

She was dragging me by the hand all the time, and now halted me in front of the great square fern-bed in the corner between the window and the hearth, and stood looking up into my face with the air of an artist awaiting approval of her latest masterpiece.  A dear old face, sharp-featured, clever, all alive with the brightness of that which was in her, and with two bright dark eyes sparkling like a robin’s under the black silk sun-bonnet which the gossips said she wore day and night.

I knew she looked just all that, but no eyes or thought had I for Aunt Jeanne or anyone else just then.

For here in front of me was the great green fern-bed, green no longer but transformed into a radiant shrine of flowers.  Nine feet long it was, and not much less in width, and its solid oaken sides rose some two feet from the floor.  It was heaped indeed with the bronze-green fronds and russet-gold stalks of fresh-cut bracken, but this was only the ordinary workaday foundation, and was almost hidden beneath a coverlet of roses—­roses of every hue from damask-red to saffron-yellow and purest white, heaped and strewn in richest profusion and filling the room with perfume.  From somewhere in the roof above, long sprays of creeping geranium and half-opened honeysuckle and branches of tree fuchsia hung down to the sides of the couch and formed a canopy, the most beautiful one could imagine.  For the flowers of the honeysuckle looked like tiny baby-fingers reaching down for something below, and the red and purple fuchsias looked like a rain of falling stars.  And beneath it sat the Queen of the Revels dressed all in white, her unbound hair rippling about her like a dark sunset cloud, till it lost itself among the creamy many-coloured petals below,—­Carette, the loveliest flower of all.

She had shaken her hair over her face to veil her modesty at the very outspoken admiration of some of the earlier comers, but I caught the sparkle of her dark eyes as she looked up at me through the silken mesh, and the sweet slim figure set the flowery canopy shaking with its restrained eagerness.  And my heart jumped within me at the lovely sight.