I am sure not." Aunt Jessica's busy hands went back to her yellow
mixing-bowl. "You know where the Gordons live, don't you?--in the big
brick house at the cross-roads."

"Yes," said Elliott, and her feet carried her out of the yard,
stopping only long enough to let her get her pink parasol from the
hall, and down the hill toward the cross-roads. It was odd about
Elliott's feet, when she hadn't quite made up her mind whether or not
she would go. Her feet seemed to have no doubt of it.

The pink parasol threw a becoming light on her face, as she knew it
would, and the odor of heliotrope rose pleasantly in her nostrils as
she walked along. But the basket grew heavy, astonishingly heavy. She
wouldn't have believed a culling-basket with a few flowers in it could
weigh so much. The farther Elliott walked, the heavier it grew. And
she hadn't gone a quarter of the way, either.

A horse's feet coming up rapidly behind her turned the girl's steps to
the side of the road. The horse drew abreast and stopped, prancing.
"Want a lift?" asked the man in the wagon. He was a big grizzled
farmer, a friend of her uncle's.

Elliott nodded, smiling. "Oh, thank you!"

"Purty flowers you've got there."

"Aren't they lovely! Aunt Jessica is sending them to Mrs. Gordon."

"That's right! That's right! Say, just look at them pansies, now!
Flowers, they don't do nothin' but grow for that aunt of yours. She
don't have to much more 'n look at 'em."

Elliott laughed. "She weeds them, I happen to know. I helped her this
afternoon."

"Did you, now! But there's a difference in folks. Take my wife: she
plants 'em and plants 'em, but she can't keep none. They up and die on
her, sure thing."

Elliott selected a purple pansy. "This looks to me as though it would
like to get into your buttonhole, Mr. Blair."

"Sho, now!" He flushed with pleasure, driving slowly as the girl
fitted the pansy in place, a bit of heliotrope nestling beside it.
"Smells good, don't it? Mother always had heliotrope in her garden.
Takes me back to when I was a little shaver."

Elliott's deft fingers were busy with the English daisies.

"Now don't you go and spoil your basket."

"No, indeed! see what a lot there are left. Here is a little nosegay
for your wife. And thank you so much for the lift."

He cranked the wheel and she jumped out, waving her hand as he drove
on. Queer a man like that should love flowers!

It was only when she was walking up the graveled path