Jerry's mercurial spirits were mounting now. The past few minutes had given him two beautiful subjects for poetry. He could make some four-lined verses, he thought, about the tree that was a bride in spring and the next winter robed for burial. He could hear the cadence of them now, beating through his head in premonitory measures. Then there was the other fancy that life was a procession to an unknown goal. Jerry had read very little, except in the works of Ruth Bellair and her compeers, and the imaginings he wrought in had a way of seeming new and strange. The talk went on, drifting back irresistibly by the familiar way they were taking to the spring of their own lives, not, it seemed, in search of a lost youth, but as if they had it with them, an invisible third, in all their memories.
"Here we are," said Jerry. He drew up at the bars that led into old Blaisdell's sugar-camp, and Marietta, not waiting for him, sprang out over the wheel. "You're as light as a feather," said he admiringly, but with no sense of wonder. They were still in that childhood land where everybody is agile for one long, bright day.
"Light as a bun," returned Marietta flippantly. "Here, you wait a minute till I get me out my basket. When you come back you be sure to coot."
Jerry drove on a step or two, and then drew in the horse. Just as she had set her basket over the bars and was prepared to follow, he called to her:—
"Marietta, I believe I'll leave the team."
Marietta understood. She came back readily.
"Well," she said, "I think 'twould look better, myself."
"I can hitch to the bars, same as we used to," Jerry continued. "Remember how Underhill's old Buckskin used to crib the fence? Here's the very piece of zinc Blaisdell nailed on that summer we were here so much."
He had turned and driven back, and while he tied the horse, Marietta took out the box of lilies.
"I guess you better hold these loose in your hand," she said tentatively. "Seems to me 'twould look more appropriate."