So? That was it? Miss Boswell with her tender eyes of comprehension was behind this kindness from Marcus? Still one must be thankful even for dictated favors once they are accepted.
Marcus read her bits again from a second letter full of the soft glamour of tropical scene and beauty. After he had gone, Selina hunted her old school geography and sought the map. A pale yellow lady-finger a little over-run in the baking, Florida was on the page, but in the mind of Selina as she sat there in the shabby parlor with the book outspread on her lap, Florida the ever-blooming and the tropical, was Ponce de Leon in gleaming apparel with banner and sword stepping ashore upon sands flowing golden beneath the fancied fountain of his search, Ponce de Leon the ever glorious and understandable to youth, symbol of quest, of faith in the fabled, of adventuring forth!
Maud walked in here on Selina in the parlor in the dusk, the open book still on her lap, the fire died to red embers, Auntie's brasses in the faint glow the one note of brightness amid the gloom. Selina's smile was a bit wan as she looked up and fluttered the pages of the unwieldy folio. "Thirty-seven maps herein of the world and its blue and pink and yellow grand divisions and kingdoms and countries, Maudie! Marcus has just been here and he's left me wincing over what he calls my limitations. I've been to Cincinnati, once, for two days, to the exposition and the musical festival with you and Judy and your mother. And I've been to Chicago for a week with Auntie and Cousin Anna to visit some Wistar kin who live in a dreary house right on the street, one of a row. Though Cousin Anna says it's a very good house and being in a real city is expected to sit on the street in a row, that I merely don't know any better. And that's the extent of my traveling!"
"Limitations is a very good word," decided Maudie promptly. "I'm deploring our deficiencies right along! I've a new word myself. Mr. Welling and I are reading German together. I gave up waiting for the rest of you to keep your appointments and asked him. That's what I came over to tell you. We started last night."
These friends of Culpepper were their friends now. As Maud put it, since they discovered they were outgrowing Brent and Sam and the rest, these newer acquisitions were a godsend!