“Yes, Virginia,” said the boy.
Then he gathered up the reins and drove his horses through the creek, and on toward the Gap and the open prairie.
“Don,” cried the girl, suddenly clutching his arm with one hand and pointing with the other, “there’s some wild bergamot just opening! I never knew it to be as early as this! And see! There’s a sunflower on the edge of the wheat field! There’ll be thousands of them soon! They’re like Priscilla! 4 She has such big, brown eyes, and is always so merry and sunny. I know you’ll like her, Don. And Mary? I think Mary’s like the larkspur in the Valley, don’t you? So independent, and sort of—of self-resourceful, as Miss Wallace says, and true. I wonder what Vivian’s like? Oh, I know! The bluebells back there by the creek. They always must have a shady spot away from the hot sun. That’s like Vivian, but she’s dear just the same, and some day I really believe she’ll be able to stand hard things as well as the rest of us. Tell me, Don, are you just as excited inside as I am?”
Donald Keith laughed.
“Of course, I am,” he said, “only, you see, Virginia, I don’t get so excited on the outside as you do. Fellows don’t, I guess.”
“I guess not,” returned Virginia thoughtfully. “Father says I need you for a balance-wheel. He says he doesn’t know what would happen if we both talked as much and got as excited as I do. You see, I’m seventeen now, and I think he wants me to begin to be a little more—more level-headed, and dignified. But I don’t know how to begin. Things 5 just spring up inside of me, and they have to come out!”
“Don’t try,” said the boy bluntly. “I like you best just as you are, Virginia.”
She sighed—a happy, little sigh.
“I’m glad,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t, Don. Think of all the good times we’d miss!”
They passed a little stream, hurrying on toward Elk Creek. Some quaking-asps made a shady spot where ferns grew.