Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/223

Rh Love wandered down to them like a gentle spirit. Never did she consciously give him any clue as to when she considered they had reached the thing that was to make the ride worth while. But when he cried out satisfactorily, she was manifestly pleased. Kenneth learned to keep his eyes and his wits about him, lest he pass by one of these favourite places unknowing. The result then was an evident disappointment and lowering of spirit. She was childishly eager to have them see with the same eyes. Then, having arrived, they liked to dismount and turn the horses loose to graze; while they lay on their backs in the grass or in the shade. They never talked much, but watched the slow circling of buzzards, or the forming and melting cloudlets, of made rainbows through their eyelashes. They could hear the horses cropping crisply, a comfortable sound. Or perhaps they crouched by the stream watching the hypnotic shift of light through branches, or the reflection on the under side of leaves. Small, busy, amusing birds complimented them with no attention as they went about their affairs. At length as the sun lowered, a chill would steal abroad. They would rouse themselves. The horses, their reins hanging, would by now be dozing with one hind leg tucked up. The dogs lay farther up the hill flat on their sides exposed to the warmest sun. Everybody seemed to stretch with yawns. But once under way the coolness of the early evening of winter seemed to fill them with a wild, playful energy. The dogs chased madly in wide circles, their quarters tucked under them, their backs humped, their hind legs spurning the soil in quick, stabbing jumps. The horses arched their necks, feeling at the bits, and made little mock shies. Daphne and Kenneth shouted foolishness at each other, and laughed a great deal.

Sometimes they went for all day. In that event they carried chops or a steak and had a picnic, Or they left the horses in the corral and tramped on foot up into the hills, or around the Peytons' ranch.

They spent a good deal of time at the Peytons' for there was a great variety of things to do and see. In the old days the ranch had been almost self-sustaining. Even now it raised many things that others were accustomed to buy in the town. The