it reminded her of her talk with Cousin Delight.

"We _do_ love leaves for their own sake; trees, and vines, and the very
green grass, even." So she said to herself, asking still for the perfect
parable that should solve and teach all.

It came, with the breath of wild grape vines, hidden somewhere in the
wayside thickets. "Under the leaf lies our tiny green blossom," it said;
"and its perfume is out on the air. Folded in the grass-blade is a
feathery bloom, of seed or grain; and by and by the fields will be all
waving with it. Be sure that the blossom is under the leaf."

Elinor Hadden's sweet child-face, always gentle and good-humored, though
visited little yet with the deep touch of earnest thought,--smiling upon
life as life smiled upon her,--looked lovelier to Leslie as this whisper
made itself heard in her heart; and it was with a sweeter patience and a
more believing kindliness that she answered, and tried to enter into,
her next merry words.

There was something different about Jeannie. She was older; there was a
kind of hard determination sometimes with her, in turning from
suggestions of graver things; the child-unconsciousness was no longer
there; something restless, now and then defiant, had taken its place;
she had caught a sound of the deeper voices, but her soul would not yet
turn to listen. She felt the blossom of life yearning under the leaf;
but she bent the green beauty heedfully above it, and made believe it
was not there.

Looking into herself and about her with asking eyes, Leslie had learned
something already by which she apprehended these things of others.
Heretofore, her two friends had seemed to her alike,--able, both of
them, to take life innocently and carelessly as it came; she began now
to feel a difference.

Her eyes were bent away off toward the Franconia hills, when Mrs.
Linceford leaned round to look in them, and spoke, in the tone her voice
had begun to take toward her. She felt one of her strong likings--her
immense fancies, as she called them, which were really warm sympathies
of the best of her with the best she found in the world--for Leslie
Goldthwaite.

"It seems to me you are a _stray_ sunbeam this morning," she said, in
her winning way. "What kind of thoughts are going out so far? What is it
all about?"

A verse of the Psalms was ringing itself in Leslie's mind; had been
there, under all the other vague musings and chance suggestions for many
minutes of her silence.