ry blue that the sky ever knew in its loveliest
moments, and a yellow that is the concentrated essence of the best gold
from the heart of California. Oh, Peter, there is enchantment in the way
I set it. There are irregular deep beds, and there are straggly places
where there are only one or two in a ragged streak, and then it runs
along the edge in a fringy rim, and then it stretches out in a marshy
place that is going to have some other wild things, arrowheads, and
orchids, and maybe a bunch of paint brush on a high, dry spot near by. I
wish you could see it!"

Peter looked at Linda reflectively and then he told her that he could
see it. He fold her that he adored it, that he was crazy about her
straggly continuity and her fringy border, but there was not one word of
truth in what he said, because what he saw was a slender thing, willowy,
graceful; roughened wavy black hair hanging half her length in heavy
braids, dark eyes and bright cheeks, a vivid red line of mouth, and
a bright brown line of freckles bridging a prominent and aristocratic
nose. What he was seeing was a soul, a young thing, a thing he coveted
with every nerve and fiber of his being. And while he glibly humored her
in her vision of decorating his brook, in his own consciousness he was
saying to himself: "Is there any reason why I should not try for her?"

And then he answered himself. "There is no reason in your life. There
is nothing ugly that could offend her or hurt her. The reason, the real
reason, probably lies in the fact that if she were thinking of caring
for anyone it would be for that attractive young schoolmate she brought
up here for me to exercise my wits upon. It is very likely that she
regards me in the light of a grandfatherly person to whom she can come
with her joys or her problems, as frankly as she has now."

So Peter asked if the irises crossed the brook and ran down both sides.
Linda sat on a packing case and concentrated on the iris, and finally
she announced that they did. She informed him that his place was going
to be natural, that Nature evolved things in her own way. She did not
grow irises down one side of a brook and arrowheads down the other.
They waded across and flew across and visited back and forth, riding
the water or the wind or the down of a bee or the tail of a cow. As she
served the supper she had brought she very gravely informed him that
there would be iris on both sides of his brook, and cress and miners'
l