"I hate it, Bles, don't you?"
"Hate what?"
"Killing any of it; it's all so pretty."
"But it must be, so that what's left will be prettier, or at least more useful."
"But it shouldn't be so; everything ought to have a chance to be beautiful and useful."
"Perhaps it ought to be so," admitted Bles, "but it isn't."
"Isn't it so--anywhere?"
"I reckon not. Death and pain pay for all good things."
She hoed away silently, hesitating over the choice of the plants, pondering this world-old truth, saddened by its ruthless cruelty.
"Death and pain," she murmured; "what a price!"
Bles leaned on his hoe and considered. It had not occurred to him till now that Zora was speaking better and better English: the idioms and errors were dropping away; they had not utterly departed, however, but came crowding back in moments of excitement. At other times she clothed Miss Smith's clear-cut, correct speech in softer Southern accents. She was drifting away from him in some intangible way to an upper world of dress and language and deportment, and the new thought was pain to him.
So it was that the Fleece rose and spread and grew to its wonderful flowering; and so these two children grew with it into theirs. Zora never forgot how they found the first white flower in that green and billowing sea, nor her low cry of pleasure and his gay shout of joy. Slowly, wonderfully the flowers spread--white, blue, and purple bells, hiding timidly, blazing luxuriantly amid the velvet leaves; until one day--it was after a southern rain and the sunlight was twinkling through the morning--all the Fleece was in flower--a mighty swaying sea, darkling rich and waving, and upon it flecks and stars of white and purple foam. The joy of the two so madly craved expression that they burst into singing; not the wild light song of dancing feet, but a low, sweet melody of her fathers' fathers, whereunto Alwyn's own deep voice fell fitly in minor cadence.
Miss Smith and Miss Taylor, who were sorting the mail, heard them singing as they came up out of the swamp. Miss Taylor looked at them, then at Miss Smith.
But Miss Smith sat white and rigid with the first opened letter in her hand.