"Sometimes," she said to me one day with a laugh, as she surveyed a
large (and noisy) selection of her numerous offspring, "sometimes, O
Allan"--she still retains that trick of speech--"I wish that I were
back in the peace of the Home of the Flower. Ah!" she added with
something of a thrill in her voice, "never can I forget the blue of
the sacred lake or the sight of those skies at dawn. Do you think that
I shall see them again when I die, O Allan?"
At the time I thought it rather ungrateful of her to speak thus, but
after all human nature is a queer thing and we are all of us attached
to the scenes of our childhood and long at times again to breathe our
natal air.
I went to see Sir Stephen the other day, and in his splendid
greenhouses the head gardener, Woodden, an old man now, showed me
three noble, long-leaved plants which sprang from the seed of the Holy
Flower that I had saved in my pocket.
But they have not yet bloomed.
Somehow I wonder what will happen when they do. It seems to me as
though when once more the glory of that golden bloom is seen of the
eyes of men, the ghosts of the terrible god of the Forest, of the
hellish and mysterious Motombo, and perhaps of the Mother of the
Flower herself, will be there to do it reverence.
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