Sometimes Linda lifted her hand from the wheel to wave a passing
salute to a particularly appealing flower picture. Sometimes she
whistled a note or cried a greeting to a mockingbird, a rosy
finch, or a song sparrow.
"Look at the pie timber!" she cried to Donald, calling his
attention to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds.
"Four hundred and twenty might be baked in that pie," she
laughed.
Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun
peered over the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if
she were asking what degree of light and warmth they would like
for the day. A new brilliancy tinged every flower face in this
light, a throbbing ecstasy mellowed every bird note; the orchards
dropped farther apart, meadows filled with grazing cattle flashed
past them, the earthy scent of freshly turned fields mingled with
flower perfume, and on their right came drifting in a cool salt
breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as they neared Laguna,
they ran past great hills, untouched since the days when David
cried: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
cometh my help." At one particularly beautiful range, draped
with the flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold
poppy, set with flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of
yellow monkey flower or the rich red of the related species, with
specimens of lupin growing in small trees, here and there
adventurous streams singing and flashing their unexpected way to
the mother breast of the waiting ocean very near to the road
which at one surprising turn carried them to the never-ending
wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly as the Bear Cat
would consent to travel, so that they might study great boulders,
huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their faces
scarred by the wrack of ages.
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