"And why do you do it? Or why don"t you do more of it?" Thaine asked.
The girl answered, smiling:
"Just between us two, I hope to do a piece good enough to sell and help to lift the price of alfalfa seed a bit."
"By the way, I brought the first load of seed over just now. Where"s Uncle Jim?" Thaine asked, trying not to let the pity in his heart show itself in his eyes.
"Uncle Jim is breaking sod--weeds, I mean--for fall sowing. Wait a minute and I"ll get you the money he left for you."
Thaine threw himself down in the shade beside Leigh"s seat while she went into the house.
"I wish I didn"t have to take that money, but I know better than to say a word," he said to himself. "Thank the Lord, the worried look is beginning to leave Uncle Jim"s face, though. How could any of us get along without Uncle Jim?"
"What little seed to be worth so much, but it"s the beginning of conquest," Leigh said as Thaine took the bills from her hand. "And it"s a much more hopeful business to reclaim from booms and weeds than from this lonely old prairie as it was when Uncle Jim and your father first came here."
"It"s just the same old pioneer spirit, though, and you are fighting a mortgage just like they fought loneliness, and besides, Asher Aydelot had Virginia Thaine to help him to keep his courage up."
A sudden flush deepened on his ruddy cheeks and he continued:
"Of course you are going to the picnic? You"ll have to start early. It"s a goodish way to "The Cottonwoods." The Sunflower Ranch needs my talents, so I can"t go with the crowd, but I may draggle in about high noon. I"ll drive over in the buggy, and I"ll try to snake some pretty girl off the wagons to ride home with me when it"s all over."
"Maybe the pretty girls will all be preempted before you get there," Leigh replied.
"I know one that I hope won"t be," Thaine said.
Leigh was bending over her drawing board and did not look up for a long minute. It was her gift to make comfort about her while she followed her own will unflinchingly. The breeze had blown the golden edges of her hair into fluffy ripples about her forehead and the deep blue of August skies was reflected in her blue eyes shaded by their long brown lashes. Thaine sat watching her every motion, as he always did when he was with her.
"Well?" Leigh looked up with the query. "And what"s to hinder your getting the pretty girl you want if she understands and you are swift enough to cut off the enemy from a flank movement?"
"The girl herself," Thaine replied.
"Serious! Tragical! Won"t you give me that chrome-yellow tube by your elbow there?" Leigh reached for the paint and their hands met.
"Say, little Sketcher of Things, will you be missing me when I go to school next month? Or will your art and your ranch take all your thoughts?"
"I wish they would, but they won"t," Leigh said. "They will help to fill up the time, though."
"Leigh, may I bring you home tomorrow night? I"m going away the next day, and I won"t see you any more for a long time."
"No, you may not," Leigh replied, looking up, and her sunny face framed by her golden brown hair was winsomely pleasing.
"Why not, Leigh? Am I too late?"
"Too early. You haven"t asked Jo and been refused yet. But you are kind to put me on the "waiting list.""
Thaine was standing beside her now.
"I mean it. Has anybody asked you specially--to be your very particular escort?"
"Oh, yes. The very nicest of the crowd." Leigh"s eyes were shining now.
"But I"ve refused him," she added.
"Who was it?"
"Thaine Aydelot, and I refused because it was good taste for me to do it.
If it"s his last day at home--and--oh, I forget what I was going to say."
"I wish you wouldn"t make a joke of it, anyhow. Tell me why you are so unkind to an old neighbor and lifelong pal," Thaine insisted.
But Leigh made no reply.
"Leigh!"
"Tell me why you insist when by all the rules you are due to snake the prettiest girl in the crowd off the wagon and into your buggy. Why aren"t you satisfied to make the other boys all envy you?" Leigh had risen and stood beside the rustic seat, her arm across its high back.
"Because it is the last time. Because we"ve known each other since childhood and have been playmates, chums, companions; because I am going one way and you another, and our paths may widen more and more, and because--oh, Leigh, because I want you."
He leaned against the back of the seat and gently put one hand on her arm.
The yellow August sunshine lay on the level prairies beyond the river. The shining thread of waters wound away across the landscape under a play of light and shadow. The clover sod at their feet was soft and green. The big golden sunflowers hung on their stalks along the border of the lawn, and overhead the ripple of the summer breezes in the cottonwoods made a music like pattering raindrops. Under their swaying boughs Leigh Shirley stood, a fair, sweet girl. And nothing in the languorous beauty of the midsummer afternoon could have been quite so pleasing without her presence there.
She looked down at Thaine"s big brown hand resting against her white arm, and then up to his handsome face.
"It would only make trouble for, for everybody. No, I"m coming home with the crowd on the hayrack." She lifted her arm and began to pull the petals from a tiny sunflower that lay on the seat beside her.
"Very well." There was no anger in Thaine"s tone. "Do you remember the big sunflower we found to send to Prince Quippi, once?"
"The one that should bring him straight from China to me, if he really cared for me?" Leigh asked.
"You said that one was to tell him that you loved him and you knew it would bring him to you. But he never came."
"It"s a way my princes have of doing," Leigh said with a little laugh.
"If I were in China and you should send me a sunflower, I"d know you wanted me to come back."
"If I ever send you one you will know that I do," Leigh said. "Meantime, my prince will wear a sprig of alfalfa on his coat."
"And a c.o.c.kle burr in his whiskers, and cerulean blue overalls like mine, and he"ll drudge along in a slow sc.r.a.p with the soil till the soil gets him," Thaine added.
"Like it got your father," Leigh commented.
"Oh, he"s just one sort of a man by himself," Thaine declared. "A pretty good sort, of course, else I"d never have recommended him to be my father.
Good-by. I"ll see you across the crowd tomorrow."
He turned at once and left her.
"The Cottonwoods" was a picturesque little grove grown in the last decade about a rocky run down which in the springtime a full stream swept. There was only a little ripple over a stony bed now, with shallow pools lost in the deeper basins here and there. The gra.s.ses lay flat and brown on the level prairie about it. Down the shaded valley a light cool breeze poured steadily. Beyond the stream a gentle slope reached far away to the foot of the three headlands--the purple notches of Thaine Aydelot"s childhood fancies.
The day was ideal. Such days come sometimes in a Kansas August. The young people of the Gra.s.s River neighborhood had made merry half of the morning in the grove, and as they gathered for the picnic lunch someone called out: