Jim gathered her close in his arms, and she clung about his neck, softly patting his brown cheek as they passed into the house. While all unseen, the light of love went in with them, a light that should never fade from the hearthstone, driving loneliness and sorrow from it, far away. 170
Leigh Shirley’s coming marked an epoch in the annals of the Grass River settlement, for her uncle often declared that he could remember only two events in the West before that time: the coming of Mrs. Aydelot and the grasshopper raid. With Leigh in his home, he almost forgot that he had ever been sad-hearted. This loving little child was such a constant source of interest and surprise. She was so innocently plain-spoken and self-dependent sometimes, and such a strange little dreamer of dreams at other times. She would drive a shrewd bargain for whatever she wanted—some more of Uncle Jim’s good cookies, or a ride all alone on the biggest pony, or a two-days’ visit at the Aydelot ranch, scrupulously rendering back value received of her own wares—kisses, or washing all the supper dishes for her tired uncle, or staying away from her play to watch that the chickens did not scratch in the garden.
But there were times when she would go alone to the bend in the river and people her world with folk of her own creation and live with them and for them. Chief among them all was a certain Prince Quippi, who would come from China some day to marry her and take her away to a house made of purple velvet and adorned with gold knobs. She had to send a letter to Prince Quippi every day or he would think she did not love him. Of course, she loved Uncle Jim best of what she called folks—but Prince Quippi was big and brown and handsome; and, strangely enough, the only kind of letter he could read from her was in a flower.
So Leigh dropped a flower on the waters of Grass River every day to float away to China telling her love to Prince Quippi. And oftenest it was the tawny sunflower, because it 171 was big and strong and could tell a big love story. Thus she dreamed her happy dreams until one day Thaine Aydelot, listening to her, said:
“Why my papa sent my mamma a sunflower once, and made her love him very much. I’ll be your real Prince Quippi—not a—a paper-doll, thinkish one, and come after you.”
“Clear from China?” Leigh queried.
“Yes, when I’m a big soldier like my papa, and we’ll go off to the purple notches and live.”
“You don’t look like my Prince Quippi,” Leigh insisted.
“But I can grow to look like any thing I want to—like a big elephant or a hippopopamus or a—angel, or any thing,” Thaine assured her.
“Well, escuse me from any of the free—a angel or a elephant. I don’t know what the poppy one is, but it’s too poppy,” Leigh said decisively.