Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of
the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted
with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and
immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared
already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to
perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil, and
amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English
taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight;
and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the
intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products
directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the Governor
that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament
as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the
first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage
who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a
bull.
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Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and
would not be pacified.
"Hush, child--hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry,
dear little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is
coming, and gentlemen along with him."
In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of
persons were seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter
scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch
scream, and then became silent, not from any notion of
obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her
disposition was excited by the appearance of those new
personages.
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