“Woman’s beauty?”
“No. Just plain beauty. Cloud or sea or face or anywhere you found it. At the end of every furrow, as Jim might say.”
Jim, who was the sergeant, shook out rings of smoke. “It ain’t only at the end of the furrow. I’ve seen it in the middle.”
The worker in iron stretched his thin body, hands under his young head. “I like fall better’n spring. Late fall when it’s all red and still, and at night there are shooting stars. Spring makes me sad.”
“What are you doing with sadness?” asked Edward. “You had as well talk of Jack-o’-Lantern being sad!—I like all seasons, each with its proper magnificence! Look at that pine, black as wrath—”
“Look at the pink water about the old Star of the West—
‘The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.’”
“I hated to see the Star sunken. After all her fighting—Sumter and all—”
“Well, we’ve put her where she’ll fight again! It’s a kind of Valhalla ending to lie there across Grant’s path.”