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CHAPTER VI The Troubadour ABOUT FIVE O'CLOCK in the evening, Nina and Anne amused themselves with setting a fancy tea-table on the veranda. Nina had gathered a quantity of the leaves of the live oak, which she possessed a particular faculty of plaiting in long, flat wreaths, and with these she garlanded the social round table, after it had been draped in its snowy damask, while Anne was busy arranging fruit in dishes with vine-leaves. "Lettice will be in despair, to-night," said Anne, looking up, and smiling at a neatly-dressed brown mulatto girl, who stood looking on with large, lustrous eyes; "her occupation's gone!" "O, Lettice must allow me to show my accomplishments," said Nina. "There are some household arts that I have quite a talent for. If I had lived in what's-its-name, there, that they used to tell about in old times—Arcadia1 —I should have made a good housekeeper; for nothing suits me better than making wreaths, and arranging bouquets. My nature is dressy. I want to dress everything. I want to dress tables, and dress vases, and adorn dishes, and dress handsome women, Anne! So look out for yourself, for when I have done crowning the table, I shall crown you!" As Nina talked, she was flitting hither and thither, taking up and laying down flowers and leaves, shaking out long sprays, and fluttering from place to place, like a bird. "It's a pity," said Anne, "that life can't be all Arcadia!" "O, yes!" said Nina. "When I was a child, I remember there was an old torn translation of a book called Gesner's Idyls,2 that used to lie about the house; and I used to read in it most charming little stories about handsome shepherds, dressed in white, playing on silver and ivory flutes; and shepherdesses, with azure mantles and floating hair; and people living on such delightful things as cool curds and milk, and grapes, and strawberries, and peaches; and there was no 319 320 DRED labor, and no trouble, and no dirt, and no care. Everybody lived like the flowers and the birds,—growing, and singing, and being beautiful. Ah, dear, I have never got over wanting it since! Why couldn't it be so?" "It's a thousand pities!" said Anne. "But what constant fight we have to maintain for order and beauty!" "Yes," said Nina; "and, what seems worse, beauty itself becomes dirt in a day. Now, these roses that we are arranging, to-morrow or next day we shall call them litter, and wish somebody would sweep them out of the way. But I never want to be the one to do that. I want some one to carry away the withered flowers, and wash the soiled vases; but I want to be the one to cut the fresh roses every day. If I were in an association, I should take that for my part. I'd arrange all their flowers through the establishment, but I should stipulate expressly that I should do no clearing up." "Well," said Anne, "it's really a mystery to me what a constant downward tendency there is to everything—how everything is gravitating back, as you may say, into disorder. Now, I think a cleanly, sweet, tasteful house—and, above all, table—are among the highest works of art. And yet, how everything attacks you when you set out to attain it—flies, cockroaches, ants, mosquitos! And, then, it seems to be the fate of all human beings, that they are constantly wearing out and disarranging and destroying all that is about them." "Yes," said Nina, "I couldn't help thinking of that when we were at the camp-meeting. The first day, I was perfectly charmed. Everything was so fresh, so cool, so dewy and sweet; but, by the end of the second day, they had thrown egg-shells, and pea-pods, and melon-rinds, and all sorts of abominations, around among the tents, and it was really shocking to contemplate." "How disgusting!" said Anne. "Now, I'm one of that sort," said Nina, "that love order dearly, but don't want the trouble of it myself. My prime minister, Aunt Katy, thanks to mamma, is an excellent hand to keep it, and I encourage her in it with all my heart; so that any part of the house where / don't go much is in beautiful order. But, bless me...

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