Alfalfa Ranch, low, wide, with spreading verandas all overgrown by roses
and woodbine, and commanding on all sides a wide view of the rolling
alfalfa-fields, was a most bewitching place for a young couple to spend
the first few months of their married life. So Jack and I were naturally
much delighted when Aunt Agnes asked us to consider it our own for as
long as we chose. The ranch, in spite of its distance from the nearest
town, surrounded as it was by the prairies, and without a neighbor
within a three-mile radius, was yet luxuriously fitted with all the
modern conveniences. Aunt Agnes was a rich young widow, and had built
the place after her husband's death, intending to live there with her
child, to whom she transferred all the wealth of devotion she had
lavished on her husband. The child, however, had died when only three
years old, and Aunt Agnes, as soon as she recovered sufficient strength,
had left Alfalfa Ranch, intending never to visit the place again. All
this had happened nearly ten years ago, and the widow, relinquishing all
the advantages her youth and beauty, quite as much as her wealth, could
give her, had devoted herself to work amid the poor of New York.
At my wedding, which she heartily approved, and where to a greater
extent than ever before she cast off the almost morbid quietness which
had grown habitual with her, she seemed particularly anxious that Jack
and I should accept the loan of Alfalfa Ranch, apparently having an old
idea that the power of our happiness would somehow lift the cloud of
sorrow which, in her mind, brooded over the place. I had not been
strong, and Jack was overjoyed at such an opportunity of taking me into
the country. High as our expectations were, the beauty of the place far
exceeded them all. What color! What glorious sunsets! And the long rides
we took, seeming to be utterly tireless in that fresh sweet air!
One afternoon I sat on the veranda at the western wing of the house. The
veranda here was broader than elsewhere, and it was reached only by a
flight of steps leading up from the lawn on one side, and by a door
opposite these steps that opened into Jack's study. The rest of this
veranda was enclosed by a high railing, and by wire nettings so thickly
overgrown with vines that the place was always very shady. I sat near
the steps, where I could watch the sweep of the great shadows thrown by
the clouds that were sailing before the west wind. Jack was inside,
writing, and now and then he would say something to me through the open
window. As I sat, lost in delight at the beauty of the view and the
sweetness of the flower-scented air, I marvelled that Aunt Agnes could
ever have left so charming a spot. "She must still love it," I thought,
getting up to move my chair to where I might see still further over the
prairies, "and some time she will come back----" At this moment I
happened to glance to the further end of the veranda, and there I saw,
to my amazement, a little child seated on the floor, playing with the
shifting shadows of the tangled creepers. It was a little girl in a
daintily embroidered white dress, with golden curls around her baby
head. As I still gazed, she suddenly turned, with a roguish toss of the
yellow hair, and fixed her serious blue eyes on me.
"Baby!" I cried. "Where did you come from? Where's your mamma, darling?"
And I took a step towards her.
"What's that, Silvia?" called Jack from within. I turned my head and saw
him sitting at his desk.
"Come quick, Jack; there's the loveliest baby--" I turned back to the
child, looked, blinked, and at this moment Jack stepped out beside me.
"Baby?" he inquired. "What on earth are you talking about, Silvia
dearest?"
"Why, but--" I exclaimed. "There _was_ one! How did she get away? She
was sitting right there when I called."
"A _baby_!" repeated my husband. "My dear, babies don't appear and
disappear like East-Indian magicians. You have been napping, and are
trying to conceal the shameful fact."
"Jack," I said, decisively, "don't you suppose I know a baby when I see
one? She was sitting right there, playing with the shadows, and I--It's
certainly very queer!"
Jack grinned. "Go and put on your habit," he replied; "the horses will
be here in ten minutes. And remember that when you have accounted for
her disappearance, her presence still remains to be explained. Or
perhaps you think Wah Sing produced her from his sleeve?"
I laughed. Wah Sing was our Chinese cook, and more apt, I thought, to
put something up his sleeve than to take anything out.
"I suppose I _was_ dreaming," I said, "though I could almost as well
believe I had only dreamed our marriage."
"Or rather," observed Jack, "that our marriage had only dreamed us."