“I’ve never felt the same about myself since I helped Him with those larkspurs. They bloom every summer, and every time I see them, I feel as if I’d made a piece of sky. You get Miss Moran to let you plant some larkspur in her garden. You won’t ever feel real downhearted and discouraged about yourself afterward. I do think a flower garden’s the sweetest thing. I wish we had one.”
“Why don’t we have one?” asked Archibald.
Pegeen looked at him doubtfully, saw determination in his face, and fairly crowed for joy.
“Out in front and along the path! Poppies and bachelor buttons and marigolds and lots of things that’ll bloom quick—and then larkspur and phlox and lilies to bloom next summer.”
Her exultant voice suddenly wavered and dropped, and the joy died out of her.
For a moment the man did not understand. Then he looked ahead and saw the end of the summer’s trail. Oddly enough he too shrank from the vision.
“I’m coming back, Peg,” he promised quickly. “I’m surely coming back. The heart of the world is up here among the hills, I believe, and there’s nothing to keep me away.”
She smiled again then—but a misty little smile.
“I just thought—all of a sudden—” she explained falteringly. “A summer’s so short and I’m being so happy—and it’s half-past June already.”
“That’s why we must hurry with our garden.” There was a sympathetic mist in the man’s own eyes, but he resolutely dragged the talk away from sentiment. It’s a way men have.