"My, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?" sighed Elsie.
"Yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has made, straight down to the prairie," cried Bertha Brown.
"Oh, look, look, Mr. Hartley! Is that grass on fire?" gasped Cordelia.
"No—I hope not."
"But you do have prairie fires?"
"Sometimes; but not so often nowadays—though I've seen some bad ones, in my time."
There was a long silence. All eyes were turned toward the west. Above, a riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting, changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie had become.
"Oh, how beautiful it all is, and how I do love it," breathed Genevieve, after a time, as if to herself.
Gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple changed, softened, and faded quite away. The slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by one the stars showed in the darkening sky.