Richie, much stronger in these days, and without his crutch, though still limping a little, met Julia and the dancing Anna on the following afternoon, and the three crossed the ferry together. It was a day bursting with summer's promise, the air was pure and warm, and the sky cloudless. Getting out of the train at Mill Valley, Julia drew an ecstatic breath.
"Oh, Richie, what heavenly freshness! Doesn't it just smooth your forehead down like a cool hand!"
There was a poignant sweetness to the mountain air, washed clear by the late rains, and warmed and invigorated by the sunshine of the lengthening March day. The country roads were dark and muddy and churned by wheel tracks, but fringed with emerald grass. Even at four o'clock the little valley was plunged in early shadow, but sunshine lay still upon the hills that framed it, and long lines of light threw the grim heights of Tamalpais into bold relief. The watching tiers of the redwoods looked refreshed, their spreading dark fans were tipped with the jade-green sprays of the year's new growth. The first pale smoke of wild lilac bloom lay over the hills.
"It makes you think of delicious words," said Julia, as Richie's rusty white mare plodded up and up the mountain road. "Ozone—and aromatic—and exhilarating! In town it was a little oppressive to-day—Anna and I were quite wilted!"
"You don't look wilted!" Richie smiled at his goddaughter, who was in her mother's arms. "Look, Ju—there's columbine! Loads of it up near my place!" "And the wild currant, with that delicious pungent smell!" sighed Julia blissfully. "What's new with you, Richie?" she asked presently.
"Oh, nothing much! Cable from Bab yesterday, but you must have had one, too?"
"Yes, I did. A third boy!" Julia laughed. "Poor Bab—when she wanted a girl so badly!"
"I suppose she did," grinned Richard.
"Oh, of course she did! Who wouldn't?" Julia hugged her own girl. "And isn't it glorious about Keith?" she added, with sudden enthusiasm.
"Is it? I suppose it is," Richie said. "But then those old guys in Germany called him a genius long before New York did, and you girls didn't make so much fuss!"