When the Ohio woodlands were gorgeous with the frost-fired splendor of October word came to Miss Jane Aydelot, of the old Aydelot farmhouse beside the National pike road, that one Thaine Aydelot had sailed from San Francisco with the Twentieth Kansas Regiment to see service in the Philippine Islands. On board the same transport was Dr. Horace Carey, of the military medical staff. That winter 309 Jane Aydelot’s hair turned white, but the pink bloom of her cheeks and the light of her clear gray eyes made her a sweet-faced woman still, whose loveliness grew with the years.
The kiss of the same October breezes was on the Kansas prairie with the hazy horizon and the infinite beauty of wide, level landscapes, overhung by the infinite beauty of blue, tender skies. Boanerges Peeperville, established as cook in the Sunflower Inn, was at home in his cosy little quarter beside the grape arbor of the rear dooryard.
“Tell me, Bo Peep, why Dr. Carey should enter the army again and go to the Philippines?” Virginia Aydelot asked on the day the news reached the Sunflower Ranch.
Bo Peep did not answer at once. Virginia was busy arranging some big yellow chrysanthemums in a tall cut-glass vase that Dr. Carey had left to be sent down to her when Bo Peep should come to the Aydelots to make his home.
“See, Bo Peep, aren’t they pretty? Set them in the middle of the table there, carefully. The first bouquet we ever had on our table was a few little sunflowers in an old peach can wrapped round with a newspaper. You didn’t answer my question. Why did Horace go so far away?”
The servant took the vase carefully and placed it as commanded. Then he turned to Virginia with a face full of intense feeling.
“Miss Virgie, I done carry messages for him all my days.” The pathos of the soft voice was touching. “I wasn’t to give this las’ one to you less’n he neveh come back. An Mis’ Virgie, Doctoh Carey won’t neveh come 310 back no mo’. But I kaint tell you yet jus’ why he done taken hisself to the Fillippians, not yet.”
“Why do you think he will never come back? You think Thaine will come home again, don’t you?” Virginia queried.
“Oh, yas’m! yas’m! Misteh Thaine, he’ll come back all right. But hit’s done fo’casted in my bones that Doctoh Horace won’t neveh come. An’ when he don’t, I’ll tell you why he leff’n Grass Riveh, Kansas, for the Fillippians.”