Page:A Little Country Girl - Coolidge (1887).djvu/165

 The large places on the Cliffs were all open and occupied now. The flower-beds, newly planted when Candace came, made wonderful spaces of color everywhere in the emerald turf. Geraniums seemed as universal as grass, and their splendid reds and pinks were such as are seldom seen anywhere except in Newport. Foliage plants grew into enormous crimson or golden mats, which showed not one break in their luxuriant fulness. In the more ornate places were beds planted to look like Turkish carpets or Indian shawls, the pattern reproduced by hundreds of small plants of carefully adjusted hues, kept closely shaven so as to lie as flat as the objects they simulated. Roses were everywhere; and the soft drifting mists which now and again blew in from the sea, and the constant underlying moisture of the climate kept everything in a state of perfect freshness.

The Casino balls and lawn-tennis matches had begun. Visitors were pouring into the Ocean House; and every day increased the number of carriages, drags, dog-carts, pony