“It’s a way my princes have of doing,” Leigh said with a little laugh.
“If I were in China and you should send me a sunflower, I’d know you wanted me to come back.”
“If I ever send you one you will know that I do,” Leigh said. “Meantime, my prince will wear a sprig of alfalfa on his coat.”
“And a cockle burr in his whiskers, and cerulean blue overalls like mine, and he’ll drudge along in a slow scrap with the soil till the soil gets him,” Thaine added.
“Like it got your father,” Leigh commented.
“Oh, he’s just one sort of a man by himself,” Thaine 280 declared. “A pretty good sort, of course, else I’d never have recommended him to be my father. Good-by. I’ll see you across the crowd tomorrow.”
He turned at once and left her.
“The Cottonwoods” was a picturesque little grove grown in the last decade about a rocky run down which in the springtime a full stream swept. There was only a little ripple over a stony bed now, with shallow pools lost in the deeper basins here and there. The grasses lay flat and brown on the level prairie about it. Down the shaded valley a light cool breeze poured steadily. Beyond the stream a gentle slope reached far away to the foot of the three headlands—the purple notches of Thaine Aydelot’s childhood fancies.
The day was ideal. Such days come sometimes in a Kansas August. The young people of the Grass River neighborhood had made merry half of the morning in the grove, and as they gathered for the picnic lunch someone called out:
“Jo Bennington, where’s Thaine Aydelot? Great note for him to disappear when this Charity Ball was executed mainly for him.”