It was the first of March. Where the irrigating ditches ran, almond and peach orchards were pink with bloom. California poppies, golden as the sunshine, nodded on the edges of the waving green wheat. Even the dry, hard desert was sweet in its miracle of blossoming. A carpet of bloom covered it. Stems so short that they could scarcely raise the buds they bore above the sand bravely pierced the hard-baked crust. Great masses of yellow and blue, white, lavender, and scarlet transformed the bleak solitary places for a little while into a glory of colour and perfume. An odour, sweet as if blown across acres of narcissus, made Mrs. Ware turn her head with a little cry of pleasure as they drove along toward the butte the afternoon of the picnic.
"It's the desert mistletoe," explained Phil, who was following on horseback with Lloyd and Joyce the surrey which Jack was driving.
"It is in blossom now, hanging in bunches from all those high bushes over yonder. Mrs. Lee says it isn't like ours. The berries, instead of being little white wax ones like pearls, shade from a deep red to the palest rose-pink."
"How lovely!" exclaimed Lloyd. "I hope I'll see some of the berries befoah I go home. Oh, deah! the days are slipping by so fast. The month will be gone befoah I know it."
Phil, seeing the wistful expression in the eyes raised to his for a moment, laid a detaining hand on her bridle-rein. "Let's walk the horses, then," he said, laughingly, "and make the minutes last just as long as possible. We'll have to fill the few days left to us so full of pleasant things that you'll never forget them. I don't want you to forget this day anyhow, because it's in your especial honour that this picnic is given—because you're such an accomplished Queen of Hearts."
"Tahts you mean," she answered, correcting him.
"Maybe I mean both," he replied, with an admiring glance that sent a quick blush to her face, and made her spur her pony on ahead.
There were more things than that fragrant, breezy ride across the desert to make her remember the day. There was the delicious supper that Jo spread out under the sheltering ledge of rock at the entrance to the great hole. There were the jokes and conundrums that passed around as they ate, the witty repartee of the boy from Belfast that kept them all laughing, and the stories gathered, like the guests, from all parts of the world.
"This is the first picnic I have been to since the one at the old mill, when you had your house-party," said Joyce, snuggling up beside Lloyd against a pile of cushions, after supper, as the blazing camp-fire dispelled the gathering shadows of the twilight.