They “finished” Minneapolis and its sturdy rival St. Paul, and hurried on to Chicago. Several in the original hundred of the Excursion had left them, and strangers had taken their places. It began to seem like breaking up in earnest.
There was one thing that disturbed Randolph; namely, that he had been unable to fulfill a laughing request made by Pet at almost the outset of the journey. He had competed with Tom in securing wild flowers for the girls, and, it must be confessed, the finest specimens had somehow found their way into Miss Pet’s lap. One variety had followed another during the passage by rail, across New England and Canada, until Pet had cried out, “You’ve given me everything!”
“Not every kind,” he replied, breathing hard after a run he had just made for some great golden daisies. “Isn’t there some special flower you want, that you haven’t had?”
“Well, let me see—a water lily!” said the girl merrily, choosing the most unlikely flower she could think of at the moment.
Randolph had laughed, too, but had resolved in his inmost heart to procure just that particular white blossom, if it could be had for love, muscle or money. But no lilies could be found. All through Manitoba, Assiniboia and Alberta he had looked in vain. Alaska yielded fir and spruce in abundance, but no water lilies. Nor was he more successful during the homeward-bound trip, across the States. Pet said nothing more about it—indeed, I think she forgot her careless suggestion almost the moment it was made; but Randolph felt himself put on his mettle, and failure stared him in the face.
No, I am not writing a “love story,” unless you grant that all true stories are that, in which pure, sweet young lives are thrown together, and drawn to one another by finest and frankest sympathy, looking ahead no farther than the sunset of that day or the sunrise of the next.
What might come in the future, these honest, joyous young people did not try to fathom. Perhaps for some of them the sacredness of a life-long companionship was waiting—who could tell? but now they just took the sweetness and comradery of To-day, and were satisfied.
As for Randolph’s failure to procure the lily, more of that by and by.
For there was one marvel, familiar to some, but new to most of the party, yet to come—the Falls of Niagara.
Chicago, with its never-ceasing stir of business activity, its broad streets, its huge “Auditorium” building, twenty stories high, its art galleries and its good-natured Western hurry and hospitality, was left behind, and one misty morning in early September the Excursion train deposited its passengers at the Niagara depot, from which they were whirled round to the Cataract House for breakfast.