"That's an old heirloom," Laura said, as she saw her guest's eyes fixed on it. "Like everything else in this house, it is coupled up with some old Macpherson clan tradition, as befitting an old bachelor and old maid of that ilk."
"We used to have two of them," York said.
"We have yet somewhere," Laura replied. "I hadn't missed one from the sideboard before. It must be back in the silver-closet, with other old silver and old memories."
Jerry's day had been full of changes, up and down, from hope to bitter disappointment, from reality to forgetfulness, from clear conception to bewildered confusion, her mind had run since she had left the oak-grove in the forenoon. When she had occasion to remember that silver cup again, she wondered how she could have passed it over so lightly at this time.
Although Jerry's problem was very real, and she brought to its solution neither experience nor discipline, unselfish breadth nor spiritual trust, there was something in the homey atmosphere of "Castle Cluny" that seemed to smooth away the long day's wrinkles for her. Out in the broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.
"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was impossible, too. I've seen both—land and sky—to-day, and both are greater than the artist painted them."
"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said, meditatively.
"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn't come to find a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared, watching the tranquil face of her hostess.
"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized that Laura Macpherson's maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was a very new type to her guest.
"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on, "but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies. There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."