“Oh! Don Morley, one minute it's the Orient, the next it's literature, and the next a farm; you don't know what you want!”
“Yes, I do, too,” he caught her bridle and brought the horses close together. “I know perfectly what I want, and so do you. Haven't I told you four times a day for two weeks?”
She looked away to the far horizon where a bank of formidable clouds was forming:
“Oh, we all think we want things one day and forget about them the next. Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute, and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end.”
“I haven't so far!” Don said fiercely. “I've gotten what was worst for me and I've made the worst of it.”
They had turned into the lane now and were walking their horses up to the stile where Jimpson was waiting to take them.
“Don't put my mare up,” directed Donald. “I've got to ride back to town to-night. There's rain in those clouds; I ought to be starting this minute.”
But his haste was evidently not imperative, for he followed Miss Lady through the narrow winding paths, between a tangle of shrubs and vines, into the old-fashioned flower garden. The spiraea was just putting out its long, feathery plumes of white, and the lilacs nodded white and purple in the breeze.
“Here's the first wild rose!” cried Miss Lady, darting to a corner of the old stone wall; “the idea of its daring to come out so soon!”
He took the frail little blossom and smiled at it half quizzically: “It's funny,” he said awkwardly, “your giving me this. You know, it's what you made me think of, the first time I saw you,—a wild rose. Didn't she, Mike?”