only the colts, but some times it was some
drifting shadow of cloud, some color or some sound, that inexplicably
brought him up to mind; and I would plague myself with wondering what
was going on in the city, and what was to become of him. But as the
days passed and no newspapers came from the city--at least I saw
none--and no letters to remind me of what was happening there, I
recalled him less and less distinctly. He remained in my mind but as a
sort of dream; things about me reminded me only of themselves, and I
became absorbed in picking out a new saddle-horse, and searching the
meadows over to see if the Mariposa lilies were coming up this year in
their accustomed places.

Splendid fields, in early spring filled with wild flowers, stretched
down toward the bay, but close around the house were the somber and, to
me, more beautiful groves of oaks. To wander away until I had lost
sight of the house in their olive glooms and saw nothing around me but
dark trunks, crooked elbows of boughs and sweeping leaves, was my
delight. I loved to crown myself with their white beards of moss, and
fancy I was walking through a cathedral aisle, a princess going to be
married. But, whereas I had never needed to imagine a bride-groom
before--myself and the crown had been enough--now my imagination
insistently placed a figure walking beside me, or coming to meet me
under the solemn roof of branches. I had to abandon my crown, and run
races with myself before I could leave the figure behind.

On the whole it was safer, I found, just now not to imagine too much,
but instead, while father was there, to take long rides with him into
the San Mateo Hills; and, after he had gone, shorter excursions in the
vicinity of the town. Or else to walk with Abby in the morning down
the broad Embarcadero Road to the little wharf on the bay. It was
charming enough there when all was idle, with white adobe huts, and
dark faces sleeping in the sun, and the lap of the tide on the
breakwater. But when a ship was coming in, or was loading to get out,
the Embarcadero filled the eye,--carts backing up with vegetables;
casks being rolled out on the wharf with a hollow and reverberating
sound; hallooings from the boat; and then round she would swing, with a
tremendous snapping of canvas, while the shadow of her brown sails,
patched with red, floated over all.

The country, and especially the country in spring, seems to have a way
of making the place wh