"What a gabble there must be in the garden, John."
"It doesn't need Prince Fine Ear to hear. Don't these big pines talk to you sometimes, and the wind in the pines—the winds—?"
"No, they don't, but Lucy does."
Something like a feeling of disappointment faintly disturbed the play of his fancies. "Let us go to the graves."
"Yes, all right, come."
They got no further than the cabin and again sat down near by, Leila carelessly gathering the early golden-rod in her lap as they sat leaning against the cabin logs.
"This is our last walk," she said, arranging the golden plumes. "There is a white golden-rod; find me another, John."
He went away to the back of the cabin and returning threw in her lap a half dozen. "Old Josiah says the blacks in the South think it is good luck to find the first white golden-rod. Then, he says, you must have a luck-wish. What shall it be? Come—quick now."
"Oh, I—don't know. Yes, I wish to have Lucy at that terrible boarding-school."
John laughed. "Oh, Leila, is that the best you can do?"