As the buggy rolled noiselessly along, Vernon and Miss Greene were silent; the spell of the spring was on them. To their right rolled the prairies, that never can become mere fields, however much they be tilled or fenced. The brown earth, with its tinge of young green here and there, or its newly ploughed clods glistening and steaming in the sun, rolled away like the sea. Far off, standing out black and forbidding against the horizon, they could see the ugly buildings of a coal shaft; behind, above the trees that grew for the city’s shade, the convent lifted its tower, and above all, the gray dome of the State House reared itself, dominating the whole scene. The air shimmered in the haze of spring. Birds were chirping in the hedges; now and then a meadow-lark sprang into the air and fled, crying out its strange staccato song as it skimmed the surface of the prairies. Vernon idly snapped the whip as he drove along; neither of them seemed to care to speak. Suddenly they heard a distant, heavy thud. The earth trembled slightly.
“What’s that?” said Miss Greene, in some alarm. “It couldn’t have been thunder.”
“No,” said Vernon, “it was the miners, blasting.”
“Where?”
“Down in the ground underneath us.”
She gave him a strange look which he did not comprehend. Then she turned and glanced quickly at the black breakers of the coal shaft, half a mile away; then at the golf-players.
“Do the mines run under this ground?” she asked, sweeping her hand about and including the links in her gesture.
“Yes, all over here, or rather under here,” Vernon said. He was proud of his knowledge of the locality. He thought it argued well that a legislator should be informed on all questions. Maria thought a moment, then she said:
“The golfers above, the miners below.”
Vernon looked at her in surprise. The pleasure of the spring had gone out of her eyes.