“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.  What shall it be?  Come—­quick now.”

“Oh, I—­don’t know.  Yes, I wish to have Lucy at that terrible boarding-school.”

John laughed.  “Oh, Leila, is that the best you can do?”

“Yes, wish a wish for me, if mine doesn’t suit.”

Then he said, “I wish the school had small-pox and you had to stay at Grey Pine.”

“I didn’t think you’d care as much as that.  Aren’t these flowers beautiful?  Wish me a real wish.”

“Then, I wish that when we grow up you would marry me.”

“Well, John, you are a silly.”  She took on an air of authoritative reprimand.  “Why, John, you are only a boy, but you ought to know better than to talk such nonsense.”

“And you,” he said, “are just a little girl.”

“Oh, I’m not so very little,” returned Miss Grey.

“When I’m older, I shall ask you again; and if you say no, I’ll ask again—­and—­until—­”

“What nonsense, John.  Let’s go home.”

He rose flushed and troubled, and said, “Are you vexed, Leila?”

“No, of course not; but it was foolish of you.”

He made no reply, in fact hardly heard her.  He was for the moment older in some ways than his years.  What had strangely moved him disturbed Leila not at all.  She talked on lightly, laughing at times, and was answered briefly; for although he had no desire to speak, the unfailing courteous ways of his foreign education forced him to disregard his desire to say.  “Oh, do let me alone; you don’t understand.”  He hardly understood himself or the impulsive stir of emotion—­a signal of coming manhood.  Annoyed by his unwillingness to talk, she too fell to silence, and they walked homeward.