LIFE OAK PLANTATION
where Manning joined them, and the three proceeded together to Carolina.
Virginia found the city charming, interesting, the kindness of the people whose names alone were familiar affected her deeply. They had spent a week in the city, as Manning knew the danger of sleeping near rice lands too early in the autumn, and was anxious to wait until a frost had rendered malarial plasmodia inert.
It was the plan to spend November on the plantation and sail for England the first week in December, in order to be at Fenwick for Christmas. The wedding of Giles and Virginia was to take place the week after New Year's.
The plantation was eighteen miles from the city. Early in the morning of the first day in November they rode out on the old Savannah turnpike, crossed the long bridge over the arm of the bay, cantered along the marshes past rice fields, now dry stubble and quite free from the nauseous reek of a few weeks before. To Virginia the ride was of absorbing interest, the refreshment of a dream; the low country with its miles of marsh and lonely desolation impressed her strangely. Now and then they would pass groups of chattering negroes who would draw aside to wish them a polite and friendly greeting as they passed.
The ride stirred her; the fresh, balmy air, sweet with the resinous, piney perfumes, summoned hosts of long-forgotten memories; she noted the quality of the sunshine, so different from that of England; in the swampy meadows flocks of snipe, plover, larks, and myriad other flute-voiced birds sent rippling choruses heavenward as they circled in search of the rice grains spilled by the
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