ith a careless
hand. Presently she stood still, and sat down without a word on the
moss-cushioned trunk of a great spruce, fallen perhaps a century ago.
She was passing through momentary moods of depression or of pleasure as
she thought of change and travel, or nourishing little jealous desires
that her serious-minded cousin should miss her.

The cousin turned back. "You might have invited me to sit down, Miss
Grey." He laughed, and then as he fell on the brown pine-needles at her
feet and looked up, he saw that her usual quick response to his challenge
of mirth was wanting.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

"Oh, about Aunt Ann and Uncle Jim, and--and--Lucy, and who will ride
her--"

"You can trust Uncle Jim about Lucy."

"I suppose so," said the girl rather dolefully and too near to the tears
she had been sternly taught to suppress.

"Isn't it queer," he said, "how people think about the same things? I was
just going to speak of Aunt Ann and Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim often talks to
me and to Mr. Rivers about the election, but if I say a word or ask a
question at table, Aunt Ann says, 'we don't talk politics.'"

"But once, John, I heard Mr. Rivers say that slavery was a curse and
wicked. Uncle Jim, he said Aunt Ann's people held slaves, and he didn't
want to talk about it. I couldn't hear the rest. I told you once about
this."

"How you hear things, Leila. Prince Fine Ear was a trifle to you."

"Who was Prince Fine Ear?" she asked.

"Oh, he was the fairy prince who could hear the grass grow and the roses
talk. It's a pretty French fairy tale."

"What a gabble there must be in the garden, John."

"It doesn't need Prince Fine Ear to hear. Don't these big pines talk to
you sometimes, and the wind in the pines--the winds--?"

"No, they don't, but Lucy does."

Something like a feeling of disappointment faintly disturbed the play of
his fancies. "Let us go to the graves."

"Yes, all right, come."

They got no further than the cabin and again sat down near by, Leila
carelessly gathering the early golden-rod in her lap as they sat leaning
against the cabin logs.

"This is our last walk," she said, arranging the golden plumes. "There is
a white golden-rod; find me another, John."

He went away to the back of the cabin and returning threw in her lap a
half dozen. "Old Josiah says the blacks in the South think it is good
luck to find the first white golden-rod. Then, he says, you must have a
luck-wish.