He was fearfully afraid she wouldn’t. She was like the gray-tailed squirrels in the park in some ways, at times ready to be friendly and intimate, and at other times shy of him, and as timid as a chipmunk.

“Well, the first time I knew I liked the woods,”—Ah! one of her trustful moods—“wasn’t when I was up there in them, but right in a city street, looking into an art-store window at a picture of a trail just like lots of trails we’ve tramped. It flashed over me right there on the crowded city sidewalk, I just love the woods! And last winter our teacher took our class at school to an art gallery one afternoon, and when I got the first queer smell, and heard the first echoey sounds that go with art galleries, it came over me what fun we’d had picking out our favorite pictures in art galleries here in New York, and going afterward to get hot chocolate somewhere, and all of a sudden it flashed over me, Why, I just love art galleries!”

“And Madame Butterfly?”

“Yes, the same way,” she told him. “I thought I’d forgotten all about it, except the fat woman who sat in front of us, and how she hadn’t gotten the powder on even, on the back of her neck; but one day last summer the orchestra at the hotel where Mother—where we—were staying, played a piece that I knew I’d heard before, and I peeked over the violinist’s shoulder, and found out what it was. And all of a sudden I saw that lovely Japanese lady in the beautiful white satin kimono on her porch with the pink sky beyond, singing about her baby. The orchestra played it lots of times after that. I asked them to, and it’s my favorite piece of music now.”

Laurel’s father looked away from her. Some of his seeds, then, had taken root and were growing. Even among thorns! He must plant and plant and plant, then, while it was still the planting season.

3

LATER THAT SAME night, in Laurel’s room at the hotel, Stephen sat down beside her by the reading-lamp, and glanced through the pile of books he had selected for her. Idylls of the King was one of the books.

“What do you say we save this one to read out loud in the woods?” he inquired.

Laurel, sunk in a soft deep armchair, the fitted work-basket in her lap, the box of candy open on the table near by, didn’t hear him apparently.

“Are there any cheapest rooms in this hotel?” she asked, gazing speculatively at the old-rose draperies at the high windows, and at the expanse of lace beyond.

“Don’t you like these rooms, Laurel?”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Only—”