When I left it
was a foot and a half high Peter, and every blue that the sky
ever knew in its loveliest moments, and a yellow that is the
concentrated essence of the best gold from the heart of
California. Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way I set it.
There are irregular deep beds, and there are straggly places
where there are only one or two in a ragged streak, and then it
runs along the edge in a fringy rim, and then it stretches out in
a marshy place that is going to have some other wild things,
arrowheads, and orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on a
high, dry spot near by. I wish you could see it!"
Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he
could see it. He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy
about her straggly continuity and her fringy border, but there
was not one word of truth in what he said, because what he saw
was a slender thing, willowy, graceful; roughened wavy black hair
hanging half her length in heavy braids, dark eyes and bright
cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and a bright brown line of
freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic nose. What he was
seeing was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted with every
nerve and fiber of his being. And while he glibly humored her in
her vision of decorating his brook, in his own consciousness he
was saying to himself: "Is there any reason why I should not try
for her?"
And then he answered himself.
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