Price laughed her usual frank laugh, albeit her brown cheek took
upon it a faint tint of Indian red. "If that's the wonderful idea you
girls have got, I don't see how it's going to help matters," she said
dryly.
"No, that's not it? We really have an idea. Now look here."
Mrs. Price "looked here." This process seemed to the superficial
observer to be merely submitting her waist and shoulders to the arms of
her nieces, and her ears to their confidential and coaxing voices.
Twice she said "it couldn't be thought of," and "it was impossible;"
once addressed Kate as "You limb!" and finally said that she "wouldn't
promise, but might write!"
*****
It was two days before Christmas. There was nothing in the air, sky,
or landscape of that Sierran slope to suggest the season to the Eastern
stranger. A soft rain had been dropping for a week on laurel, pine, and
buckeye, and the blades of springing grasses and shyly opening flowers.
Sedate and silent hillsides that had grown dumb and parched towards the
end of the dry season became gently articulate again; there were murmurs
in hushed and forgotten canyons, the leap and laugh of water among the
dry bones of dusty creeks, and the full song of the larger forks and
rivers.
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