He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little longer sweep to the pansy-bed--a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now, but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, good horse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that roseate future when she belonged to him!
Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging about in the sunshine, whistling the _Indian Serenade_.
"Young mars' feel 'way up in de clouds _dis_ day," he said to Aunt Daphne. "He wake up ez glad ez ef he done 'fessed 'ligion las' night. Well, all de folkses cert'n'y 'joyed deyselves. Ol' Mistah Fargo done eat 'bout forty uh dem jumbles. Ah heah him talkin' ter Mars' John. 'Reck'n yo' mus' hab er crackahjack cook down heah,' he say. Hyuh, hyuh!"
"G'way wid yo' blackgyardin'!" sniffed Aunt Daphne, delighted. "Don' need ter come eroun' honey-caffuddlin' _me_!"
"Dat's whut he say," insisted Uncle Jefferson; "he did fo' er fac'!"
She drew her hands from the suds and looked at him anxiously. "Jeffe'son, yo' reck'n Mars' John gwineter fetch dat Yankee 'ooman heah ter Dam'ry Co'ot, ter be ouah mistis?"
"Humph!" scoffed her spouse. "Dat high-falutin' gal whut done swaller de ramrod? No suh-ree-bob-tail! De oldah yo' gits, de mo' foolishah yo' citations is! Don' yo' tek no mo' trouble on yo' back den yo' kin keek off'n yo' heels! _She_ ain' gwineter run _dis_ place, er ol' Devil-John tuhn ovah in he grave!"
Sunset found Valiant sitting in the music-room before the old square piano. In the shadowy chamber the keys of mother-of-pearl gleamed with dull colors under his fingers. He struck at first only broken chords, that became finally the haunting barcarole of _Tales of Hoffmann_. It was the air that had drifted across the garden when he had stood with Shirley by the sun-dial, in the moment of their first kiss. Over and over he played it, improvising dreamy variations, till the tender melody seemed the dear ghost of that embrace. At length he went into the library and in the crimsoning light sat down at the desk, and began to write:
