The air had been purified by
the storm.
CHAPTER XI
IN DEFENSE OF THE PROPRIETIES
Virginia and I arrived in Waterloo about two days after we left the
Grove of Destiny, as my granddaughter Gertrude insists on calling the
place at which we camped after we left Independence. We went in a sort
of rather guess-way back to the Ridge Road, very happy, talking to each
other about ourselves all the while, and admiring everything we saw
along the way. The wild sweet-williams were in bloom, now, and scattered
among them were the brilliant orange-colored puccoons; and the grass
even on the knolls was long enough to wave in the wind like a rippling
sea. It was a cool and sunny spell of weather, with fleecy clouds
chasing one another up from the northwest like great ships under full
sail running wing-and-wing before the northwest wind which blew strong
day and night. It was a new sort of weather to me--the typical
high-barometer weather of the prairies after a violent "low." The
driving clouds on the first day were sometimes heavy enough to spill
over a scud of rain (which often caught Virginia like a cold splash from
a hose), and were whisked off to the southeast in a few minutes,
followed by a brilliant burst of sunshine--and all the time the shadows
of the clouds raced over the prairie in big and little bluish patches
speeding forever onward over a groundwork of green and gold dotted with
the white and purple and yellow of the flowers.
Pages:
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215