Like Andrew, the contradictory old gardener, whose name fitted like a glove, had an affection for the white flower of a girl whose hobby it was!
He had risen early, on the morning after the “fiery note”, had deported sleeping flower families from other beds and wild flowers from their rustic haunts, to build up the new democracy.
But the ruined ash-tree he could not repair. Reduced almost, to a bare trunk, it could no longer roll up the whites of its eyes, when ruffled—show only the pale undersides of its crown of leaves—or it might well have done so, this morning, over a miracle which presently took place with its assistance.
“Hullo—Unie! Unie-Wunie! Well! isn’t the last long farewell to your flower clock said?” cried Pemrose again, dancing down the silvery garden path—her whole warm being simply on the fire-edge of vacation joy. “Oh-h! this is a wonderful day to start for camp. A little ‘chilly-cold’, as Sods would say! But that makes it all the better for hiking. And to-night—to-night we may be sleeping out by the Long Trail! Oh! aren’t you just wild over it, too?”
There was an answering shout, rather faint, from the neighborhood of the dim old sundial, within a stone’s throw of the wood.
“I expect she’s watering the ‘clocksie’ with a final tear,” said Pemrose to herself. “Well! if she is feeling rather blue over saying good-bye to her flowers—goodbye for this year to most of them—on top of the good-bye to her father and mother when they started for Europe yesterday, I—I’m going to spring a diversion on her.... Hi there, Jack,” she called exultingly, “don’t you want the big end of a sensation, a sunrise sensation; don’t you want to listen in on my ring; so early in the morning as this we ought to be able to pick up something, before the sounds ‘dim off’ with bright daylight—there are some strong sending stations near?”
Una rose, a dewy sprite, from the neighborhood of her flower clock.
“Why are the sound waves stronger at night—or in the early morning?” she asked.
“Search me!” The radio amateur shrugged her shoulders gayly. “Father did venture some reason for it, something about ‘molecules’, but it didn’t stick!” She tapped her forehead with a ringed forefinger. “Anyhow, he said it was only an ‘out-shot’, merrily; that every day somebody was making a new out-shot in the direction of radio, as he did when he discovered this new crystal, more wonderful than galena or silicon, or any of the detectors which people have been using, as a ‘radio soul’, up to the present.”
That listening soul was in the girl’s eyes now, her larkspur eyes. She swung the radio head-phone, artistically carved, or engraved, with Camp Fire symbols, connected by an enameled wire with a minute joint in the deep ring upon her forefinger—a ring whose light-hued bakelite setting shimmered like amber in the primrose dawn.