The trail up the steep slope twisted its way back and forth through the low timber that covered the sides of the bluffs, and the two in the buggy found themselves shut away in its solitary windings.
“What a shadowy road,” Leigh said. “And see that cliff dropping down beyond that turn. How could there be such a romantic place out on these level plains?”
“It was my fairy land when I was a little tot,” Thaine replied. “I came here long ago and explored it myself.”
“I’d like to come here sketching sometime. See how the branches meet overhead. The odors from the bluffside are like the odors of the woodland back in the Clover valley in Ohio. I remember them yet, although I was so little when I left there,” Leigh said, turning to Thaine.
He shifted the reins, and throwing his hat in the buggy before him he pushed back the hair from his forehead.
“Leigh, will you let me take you home? I didn’t ask Jo after all. Todd wouldn’t wait long enough for me to 283 do that, as I knew well enough he wouldn’t. Don’t be mad at me. Please don’t,” he pleaded.
“Why, I’m glad if you really want me to go with you, but you shouldn’t have staid away this morning.”
“I did it on purpose. I knew Todd wouldn’t let the chance slip—nor Jo neither, if I let him have it.”
“You let him have it merely because you didn’t want the chance today. Your kindness will be your undoing some day,” Leigh said with a smile that took off the edge of sarcasm.
Thaine said nothing in response, and they climbed slowly to the top of the bluff and stood at last on the crest of the middle headland.