If this could be his
life,--an endless summer, with a search for new plants every
morning, and their classification every evening, with Asenath's
help on the shady portico of Friend Mitchenor's house,--he could
forget his doom, and enjoy the blessing of life unthinkingly.
The azaleas succeeded to the anemones, the orchis and trillium
followed, then the yellow gerardias and the feathery purple
pogonias, and finally the growing gleam of the golden-rods along
the wood-side and the red umbels of the tall eupatoriums in the
meadow announced the close of summer. One evening, as Richard, in
displaying his collection, brought to view the blood-red leaf of a
gum-tree, Asenath exclaimed--
"Ah, there is the sign! It is early, this year."
"What sign?" he asked.
"That the summer is over. We shall soon have frosty nights,
and then nothing will be left for us except the asters and gentians
and golden-rods."
Was the time indeed so near? A few more weeks, and this Arcadian
life would close. He must go back to the city, to its rectilinear
streets, its close brick walls, its artificial, constrained
existence.
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