With a merry good-bye Amanda set off, the basket upon her arm, one hand
grasping the red stem of the rhubarb parasol while the great green leaf
flopped up and down upon her head in cool ministration.
Down the sunny road she trudged, spasmodically singing bits of gay
songs, then again talking to herself. "This here is a dandy parasol.
Cooler'n a real one and lots nicer'n a bonnet or a hat. Only I wish it
was bigger, so my arms would be covered, for it's hot out to-day."
When she reached the little red brick country schoolhouse, half-way
between her home and the Landis farm, she paused in the shade of a
great oak that grew in the school-yard.
"Guess I'll rest the apple butter a while in this shade," she said to
herself, "and pick a bouquet for my knight's mom." From the grassy
roadside she gathered yellow and gold butter-and-eggs, blue spikes of
false dragon's head, and edged them with a lacy ruffle of wild carrot
flowers.
"There, that's grand!" she said as she held the bouquet at arm's length
and surveyed it carefully. "I'll hold it out, just so, and I'll say to
Mrs. Landis, 'Mother of my knight, I salute you!' I know she'll be
surprised. Mebbe I might tell her just how brave her Martin is and how
I made him a knight. She'll be glad. It must be a satisfaction to have
a boy a knight." She smiled in happy anticipation of the wonderful
message she was going to bring Mrs. Landis. Then she replaced the
rhubarb parasol over her head, picked up the basket, and went down the
country road to the Landis farm.
"It's good Landis's don't live far from our place," she thought. "My
parasol's wiltin'."
Like the majority of houses in the Crow Hill section of country, the
Landis house was set in a frame of green trees and old-fashioned flower
gardens. It flaunted in the face of the passer-by an old-time front
yard. The wide brick walk that led straight from the gate to the big
front porch was edged on both sides with a row of bricks placed corners
up. On either side of the walk were bushes, long since placed without
the discriminating eye of a landscape gardener but holding in their
very randomness a charm unrivaled by any precise planting. Mock-orange
bushes and lilacs towered above the low deutzias, while masses of
zinnias, petunias, four-o'clocks, and a score of other old-fashioned
posies crowded against each other in the long beds that edged the walks
and in the smaller round beds that were dotted here and there in the
grass. Jaded motorists from the city drove their cars slowly past the
glory of the Landis riot of blossoms.
As Amanda neared the place she looked ruefully at her knot of wild
flowers. "She's got so many pretty ones," she thought. "But, ach, I
guess she'll like these here, too, long as they're a present."