"Well, old girl," he said, "I'm afraid you and I won't have many more talks over this fence."
The brood-mare looked at him with questioning eyes.
"I plead guilty," he went on, "I oughtn't to have kept the secret from you, I know. The minute I got the letter I should have come out to tell you about it, but it was raining; honestly, it was."
He gave her a lump of sugar by way of conciliation.
"You see, I couldn't resist this one," he continued, while the sugar crunched under her teeth; "it's a big honor and three thousand a year, and I've got to do something; now, haven't I?"
His tone was doubtful, as though he were hardly sure of her opinion. The meadow-lark which he had disturbed was releasing the joy of its full throat under a shaft of sunlight further down the fence. The air hung over them, sweet with the fragrance of the freshened pasture, charged with the mysterious power of a Santa Clara Spring. No man, or horse, who has caught that smell, ever forgets the valley of the Saint. Bonita was looking across the green to the mushroom gatherers.
Craig spoke, a little petulantly.
"You never agree with me about my going, anyway. You seem to think that the beauty of this campus and the freedom of everything here is argument enough. But it's all too uncertain. I've told you that my salary is cut away down and I'm not any too sure of ever having it made up to me; as it is, we assistants are here only because the heads decided to cut their own pay and keep us for the sake of the departments. If the suit is lost, it's good-bye, anyway. I can't believe you have much idea that we're going to win it to-morrow. It went for us in the lower courts, here in California, but do you think that the Supreme Court of these selfish and United States is going to decide for us just because they were gallant enough to Mrs. Stanford to hurry the case up in the calendar and cut short her suspense? You don't understand things, if you think so. Out here where you live, the rains may be late and the grass seem never coming, but you know it'll rain sooner or later, and you're getting hay right along and it doesn't take much water to bring up what you want. But with me it's different. We're going to get a weather prediction from Washington to-morrow that'll tell us definitely whether it's to be winter for keeps around here or summer and a good crop."
The instructor leaned on the fence and puffed on at his pipe. Bonita endured the smoke that clung around them in the still air, for she felt that they were at a crisis. She drew up closer to the rails and put her head against the instructor's shoulder. Suddenly, the man let his pipe fall into the grass and he laid his face against her soft, gray nose.
"You're a good old girl," he said, "and you know more about it than anyone. But you haven't any money question to worry you. You don't love the place a bit more than I do; you don't love it as much, because you only know the nature side of it, and I know the bigness of the rest of it, too. But the hope's almost dead, old lady; I can't tie my ambitions to a corpse, you wouldn't ask me to, and you know I'm not the only one to be looked after. But, oh, it'll be hard to go, won't it! There's something that grips you where you live—you understand it."