Golden-rod was blooming when Elizabeth came back. Its plumes along the roadside were dusty and its stature stunted, yet it stood there fringing the gray highway in friendly proximity to passing wheels, being a companionable herb, always crowding closely after man in his trodden ways.
Elizabeth had written frequently while away, postcards, with pictures of distant places on them, sent off in haste as she lighted now and then like a migrating bird. The last of these had come from Montreal, and there had been no answering it, as in the case with many of the rest. Dr. Hall had written a few letters, in leisurely, lightsome, gossipy stride, for which he had been thanked briefly, yet warmly enough for the public eye, in scrappy little scrawls.
In that way Elizabeth had kept up with home news pretty well, but it was an astonishing revelation to her when she and her mother came home that autumn morning when the golden-rod was blooming by the calm Arkansas. There was not much water in the river at that season, it is true, but it was bigger even at that low stage than the Bendemeer, and far more worthy a song.
The roundhouse was finished; it was stabling several road engines that day, grimy young men grooming them with large bunches of greasy waste. Close beside it the
