"When I think of you I put violets in your hair," he said.
He took a step toward her as he spoke and as he did so she started her pony. A little way off she checked him and said:
"I'm sorry. There are no violets now."
She rode away slowly waving her hand and singing with the joy of a bird in the springtime:
"My sweetheart, come along
Don't you hear the glad song
As the notes of the nightingale flow?
Don't you hear the fond tale
Of the sweet nightingale
As she sings in the valleys below—
As she sings in the valleys below?"
He stood looking and listening. The song came to him as clear and sweet as the notes of a vesper bell wandering in miles of silence.
When it had ceased he felt his lip and said: "How slow the time passes! I'm going to get some shaving soap and a razor."
That evening when Harry was helping Samson with the horses he said:
"I'm going to tell you a secret. I wish you wouldn't say anything about it."
Samson stood pulling the hair out of his card and looking very stern as he listened while Harry told of the assault upon him and how Bim had arrived and driven the rowdies away with her gun but he said not a word of her demonstration of tender sympathy. To him that had clothed the whole adventure with a kind of sanctity so that he could not bear to have it talked about.