She was blushing.
"You are planting flower seeds."
"Yes; so many flowers were killed by the cold last winter."
"I see; there must a lot of them have died here, but their souls didn't go far, did they now?"
She went to digging again in the black moist earth. He lingered. The girl worked on, and her blush deepened. He felt a lawless impulse to vault the palings, and carry her off to be a flower for ever in some wooded glade near by. He dismissed it as impracticable. His intentions would probably be misconstrued.
"I hope your garden will thrive. It has a pretty pattern to follow."
"Thank you!"
He raised his hat and passed on, thinking; thinking of all the old dead flowers, and their pretty souls that had gone to bloom in the heaven of the maid's face.
Before the road turned to the left he found a path leading over to the top of the palisade. There on a little rocky shelf, hundreds of feet above the river, he lay a long time in the spring sun, looking over to the farther shore, where the city crept to the south, and lost its sharp lines in the smoky distance. There he smoked and gave himself up to the moment. He was glad to be out of that rush. He could see matters more clearly now—appraise values more justly. He was glad of everything that had come. Above all, glad to go back and carry on that big work of his father's—his father who had done so much to redeem the wilderness—and incidentally he would redeem his own manhood.
It will be recalled that the young man frequently expressed himself with regrettable inelegance; that he habitually availed himself, indeed, of a most infelicitous species of metaphor. It must not be supposed that this spring day in the spring places had reformed his manner of delivery. When he chose to word his emotions it was still done in a manner to make the right-spoken grieve. Thus, going back toward the road, after reviewing his great plans for the future, he spoke aloud: "I believe it's going to be a good game."