Pearl looked at them in pity. The old dog, wrinkling his nose and turning away his head, did not give them a glance. He knew them. Noisy things! Let 'em bawl. Come on!
Across the narrow creek they bounded, Pearl and old Nap, and up the other hill where the silver willows grew so tall they were hidden in them. The goldenrod nodded its plumy head in the breeze, and the tall Gaillardia, brown and yellow, flickered unsteadily on its stem.
The billows of shadow swept over the wheat on each side of the narrow pasture; the golden flowers, the golden fields, the warm golden sunshine intoxicated Pearl with their luxurious beauty, and in that hour of delight she realised more pleasure from them than Sam Motherwell and his wife had in all their long lives of barren selfishness. Their souls were of a dull drab dryness in which no flower took root, there was no gold to them but the gold of greed and gain, and with it they had never bought a smile or a gentle hand pressure or a fervid "God bless you!" and so it lost its golden colour, and turned to lead and ashes in their hands.
When Pearl and Nap got the cows turned homeward they had to slacken their pace.
"I don't care how cross she is," Pearl said, "if I can come for the cows every night. Look at that fluffy white cloud! Say, wouldn't that make a hat trimming that would do your heart good. The body of the hat blue like that up there, edged 'round with that cloud over there, then a blue cape with white fur on it just to match. I kin just feel that white stuff under my chin."
Then Pearl began to cake-walk and sing a song she had heard Camilla sing. She had forgotten some of the words, but Pearl never was at a loss for words:
The wild waves are singing to the shore
As they were in the happy days of yore.
Pearl could not remember what the wild waves were singing, so she sang what was in her own heart:
She can't take the ripple from the breeze,
And she can't take the rustle from the trees;
And when I am out of the old girl's sight
I can-just-do-as-I-please.
"That's right, I think the same way and try to act up to it," a man's voice said slowly. "But don't let her hear you say so."