"Then you must read the little book, Miss Betty, called 'Abdallah, or the Four-leaved Shamrock.' Abdallah was a son of the desert who spent his life in a search for the lucky shamrock. He had been taught that it was the most beautiful flower of Paradise. One leaf was red like copper, another white like silver, the third yellow like gold, and the fourth was a glittering diamond. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, poor Eve reached out and clutched at a blossom to carry away with her. In her despair she did not notice what she plucked, but, as she passed through the portal, curiosity made her open her hand to look at the flower she had snatched. To her joy it was the shamrock. But while she looked, a gust of wind caught up the diamond leaf and blew it back within the gates, just as they closed behind her. The name of that leaf was Perfect Happiness. That is why men never find it in this world for all their searching. It is to be found only in Paradise."
"Oh, but I don't believe that!" cried Lloyd. "Lots and lots of times I have been perfectly happy, and I am suah that everybody must be at some time or anothah in this world."
"Yes, but you didn't stay happy, did you?" asked Joyce, who had come back in time to hear part of the legend. "We get glimpses of it now and then, as poor Eve did when she opened her hand, but part of it always flies away while we are looking at it. People can be contented all the time, and happy in a mild way, but nobody can be perfectly, radiantly happy all the time, day in and day out. The legend is right. It is only in Paradise that one can find the diamond leaf."
"Joyce talks as if she were a hundred yeahs old," laughed Lloyd, looking up at Doctor Bradford. "Maybe there is some truth in yoah old Oriental legend, but I believe times have changed since Abdallah went a-hunting. Phil and I came across a song the othah day that I want you all to heah. Maybe it will make you change yoah minds."
Phil protested with many grimaces and much nonsense that he "could not sing the old songs now." That he would not "be butchered to make a Roman holiday." But all the time he protested, he was stepping toward the piano in a fantastic exaggerated cake-walk that set his audience to laughing. At the first low notes of the accompaniment, he dropped his foolishness and began to sing in a full, sweet voice that brought the old Colonel to the door of his den to listen. Eliot, packing trunks in the upper hall, leaned over the banister:
| "I know a place where the sun is like gold, |
| And the cherry blooms burst with snow. |
| And down underneath is the loveliest nook |
| Where the four-leaf clovers grow. |
"One leaf is for hope and one is for faith, |
| And one is for love you know, |
| And God put another one in for luck. |
| If you search you will find where they grow. |
"And you must have hope and you must have faith. |
| You must love and be strong, and so |
| If you work, if you wait, you will find the place |
| Where the four-leaf clovers grow." |
It was a sweet, haunting melody that accompanied the words, and the gay party of nine, strolling toward the orchard, hummed it all the way.
There in the shade of the big apple-trees, where the clover grew in thick patches, they began their search; all together at first, then in little groups of twos and threes, until they had hunted over the entire orchard. Stuart, who had been doing more talking than hunting, went to groping industriously around on his hands and knees, when they all came together again after an hour's search.
"Bradford," he said, emphatically, "I am beginning to think that you and Miss Joyce are right, and that Paradise has a monopoly on the four-leaf kind. I haven't caught a glimpse of one. Not even its shadow."
Lloyd held up a handful. "I found them in several places, thick as hops."