“No!” The child’s face was quaintly contemptuous. “It’s too—too choky.” The little hand clutched at the fat brown throat. “And the grass is so mussy green, and you can’t see to anywhere for the bumpy hills and things. I like our old brown prairies best. It’s so—nice out here.” And with a sigh of perfect satisfaction Thaine leaned against Dr. Carey’s shoulder and gazed out at the wide landscape swathed in the early morning sunlight.
The two men exchanged glances.
“This will be the land of memory for him some day, as you look back to the mountains of Virginia and I to the woodlands of Ohio,” Asher said.
“It is worth remembering, anyhow,” Carey replied. “I can count twenty young windbreaks from the swell just ahead, and the groves are springing up on many ranches from year to year. Your grove is the finest in the valley now, Aydelot.” 143
“It is doing well,” Asher said. “Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home-to-be on the first evening we came to the Sunflower Inn. It was a sort of mirage-of-the-desert picture, it is true, but we were like the tapestry weavers. We hung the pattern up before our eyes and worked to it. It is slow weaving, I’ll admit, but we kept on because we wanted to at first, then because we had to, and finally because our hearts took root in a baby’s grave. They say the tapestry makers work on the wrong side of the threads, but when their work is done the pattern comes out complete. I hope ours will too. But there’s many a day of aching muscles, and many a day of disappointment along the way. Crops prosper and crops fail, but we can’t let the soil go untilled.”
“I think we are all tapestry weavers. The trouble is sometimes in the pattern we hang up before us and sometimes in the careless weaving,” Dr. Carey added.
They rode a while in silence. The doctor’s cheek was against Thaine’s dark hair and Asher looked down at his hard brown hands and then away at the autumn prairie.
Fifteen years on a plains claim, with all the daily grind of sowing and reaping and care of stock and garden, had not taken quite all the military bearing from him. He was thirty-eight years old now, vigorous and wholesome and hopeful. The tanning Kansas sunshine had not hidden the old expression of patience and endurance, nor had the sight of many hardships driven the vision from the clear, far-seeing gray eyes.
“Look at the sunflowers, Papa,” Thaine cried as a curve of the trail brought a long golden line to view.