But I nursed misgivings both for Miss Caroline and for
Little Arcady. How would they take each other? I conceived Miss Caroline
to be a formidable person whom Little Miss resembled, Clem said, "as
aigs look lahk aigs." No further detail could I elicit from him save
that his Mistress was "not fleshily inclahned," and that Little Miss was
"sweetah'n honey on a rag!"
They would find our summer acceptable, even after a Southern summer
heavy-sweet with magnolia and jasmine, honeysuckle and mimosa; with
spirea and bridal-wreath and white-blossomed sloe trees. And the house
as put to rights by Clem would be found at least endurable. It had not
the solid grace nor the columned front of the houses I had somewhat
hurriedly admired in the Southland some years before, but its lower
rooms were wide, its windows abundant, and outwardly it had escaped the
blight of the scroll saw.
But the civilization of Little Arcady would be alien to the newcomers,
and I was apprehensive that it would also be difficult.
Further, I suspected that J.R.C. Tuckerman, with all his genius for hard
work, lacked the administrative gifts of a true financier. He said a
hundred thousand pullets when he should have said twenty-five, and he
seemed to consider his banked hoard of gold money to be inexhaustible
when it was in fact merely a sum slightly greater than he was wont to
juggle with in his darkened mind.
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