sing.

"Why not, Leigh? Am I too late?"

"Too early. You haven't asked Jo and been refused yet. But you are kind to
put me on the 'waiting list.'"

Thaine was standing beside her now.

"I mean it. Has anybody asked you specially--to be your very particular
escort?"

"Oh, yes. The very nicest of the crowd." Leigh's eyes were shining now.
"But I've refused him," she added.

"Who was it?"

"Thaine Aydelot, and I refused because it was good taste for me to do it.
If it's his last day at home--and--oh, I forget what I was going to say."

"I wish you wouldn't make a joke of it, anyhow. Tell me why you are so
unkind to an old neighbor and lifelong pal," Thaine insisted.

But Leigh made no reply.

"Leigh!"

"Tell me why you insist when by all the rules you are due to snake the
prettiest girl in the crowd off the wagon and into your buggy. Why aren't
you satisfied to make the other boys all envy you?" Leigh had risen and
stood beside the rustic seat, her arm across its high back.

"Because it is the last time. Because we've known each other since
childhood and have been playmates, chums, companions; because I am going
one way and you another, and our paths may widen more and more, and
because--oh, Leigh, because I want you."

He leaned against the back of the seat and gently put one hand on her
arm.

The yellow August sunshine lay on the level prairies beyond the river. The
shining thread of waters wound away across the landscape under a play of
light and shadow. The clover sod at their feet was soft and green. The big
golden sunflowers hung on their stalks along the border of the lawn, and
overhead the ripple of the summer breezes in the cottonwoods made a music
like pattering raindrops. Under their swaying boughs Leigh Shirley stood,
a fair, sweet girl. And nothing in the languorous beauty of the midsummer
afternoon could have been quite so pleasing without her presence there.

She looked down at Thaine's big brown hand resting against her white arm,
and then up to his handsome face.

"It would only make trouble for, for everybody. No, I'm coming home with
the crowd on the hayrack." She lifted her arm and began to pull the petals
from a tiny sunflower that lay on the seat beside her.

"Very well." There was no anger in Thaine's tone. "Do you remember the big
sunflower we found to send to Prince Quippi, once?"

"The one that should bring him straight from China to me, if he really
cared for me?" Leigh ask