Up above is the sky and the sun, but
this is a pool, and we are fathoms deep."
They started their horses, but a dog-tooth violet, shouldering
amongst the maidenhair, caught her eye and made her rein in
again.
They cleared the crest and emerged from the pool as if into
another world, for now they were in the thicket of velvet-trunked
young madronos and looking down the open, sun-washed hillside,
across the nodding grasses, to the drifts of blue and white
nemophilae that carpeted the tiny meadow on either side the tiny
stream. Dede clapped her hands.
"It's sure prettier than office furniture," Daylight remarked.
"It sure is," she answered.
And Daylight, who knew his weakness in the use of the particular
word sure, knew that she had repeated it deliberately and with
love.
They crossed the stream and took the cattle track over the low
rocky hill and through the scrub forest of manzanita, till they
emerged on the next tiny valley with its meadow-bordered
streamlet.
"If we don't run into some quail pretty soon, I'll be surprised
some," Daylight said.
And as the words left his lips there was a wild series of
explosive thrumming as the old quail arose from all about Wolf,
while the young ones scuttled for safety and disappeared
miraculously before the spectators' very eyes.
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