after all
these years of change is on me still. Awhile we watched the flashing
ripples on the river, and the sky's darkening afterglow. Then we turned
to the moonlit east.

"Do you know what the people of Hopi-land call this month?" Eloise
asked.

"I don't know Hopi words for what is beautiful," I replied.

"They call it 'the Moon of the Peach Blossom', and they cherish the time
in their calendar."

"Then we will be Hopi people," I declared, "for it was in their Moon of
the Peach Blossom that you grew up for me from the little girl who
called me a bob-cat down in the doorway of the old San Miguel Church in
Santa Fe, and from Aunty Boone's 'Little Lees' at old Fort Bent, to the
Eloise of St. Ann's by the Kansas Neosho."

The sound of a sweet-toned bell told us that we must not stay longer,
and together we followed the path from the Flat Rock up to the academy
door. And all the way was like the ways of Paradise to me, for I was in
the peach-blossom moon of my own life.

X

THE HANDS THAT CLING

The hands that take
No weight from your sad cross, oh, lighter far
It were but for the burden that they bring!
God only knows what hind'ring things they are--
The hands that cling.
--ESTHER M. CLARK

The next morning three of us waited in the stage before the door of St.
Ann's Academy. A thin-faced nun, who was called Sister Anita, sat beside
Eloise St. Vrain, her snowy head-dress, with her black veil and somber
garments, contrasting sharply with the silver-gray hat and traveling
costume of her companion. Hints of pink-satin linings to coat-collar and
pocket-flaps, and the pink facing of the broad hat-brim, seemed borrowed
from the silver and pink of misty morning skies, with the golden hair
catching the glint of all the early sunbeams. There was a tenderness in
the bright face, the sadness which parting puts temporarily into young
countenances. The girl looked lovingly at the church, and St. Ann's, and
the green fields reaching up to the edge of the mission premises.

As we waited, Mother Bridget and Little Blue Flower came slowly out of
the academy door. The good mother's arm was around the Indian girl, and
her eyes filled with tears as she looked down affectionately at the dark
face.

Little Blue Flower, true to her heritage, gave no sign of grief save for
the burning light in her big, dry eyes. She listened silently to Mother
Bridget's parting words of advice and s