We wandered gaily over the hill, calling to each other with
laughter and jest, getting parted and delightfully lost in that
little pathless wilderness, and finding each other unexpectedly in
nooks and dips and sunny silences, where the wind purred and
gentled and went softly. When the sun began to hang low, sending
great fan-like streamers of radiance up to the zenith, we
foregathered in a tiny, sequestered valley, full of young green
fern, lying in the shadow of a wooded hill. In it was a shallow
pool--a glimmering green sheet of water on whose banks nymphs
might dance as blithely as ever they did on Argive hill or in
Cretan dale. There we sat and stripped the faded leaves and stems
from our spoil, making up the blossoms into bouquets to fill our
baskets with sweetness. The Story Girl twisted a spray of
divinest pink in her brown curls, and told us an old legend of a
beautiful Indian maiden who died of a broken heart when the first
snows of winter were falling, because she believed her long-absent
lover was false. But he came back in the spring time from his
long captivity; and when he heard that she was dead he sought her
grave to mourn her, and lo, under the dead leaves of the old year
he found sweet sprays of a blossom never seen before, and knew
that it was a message of love and remembrance from his dark-eyed
sweet-heart.
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