And once he was able to
buy some flower seeds, and she grew a pansy in a pot because there is
no green thing in that barren land, and she tended it and watched it as
it came through the earth, and no one was so joyous as she. "It hurts
me to look at pansies even now," he said; and I was glad, Mamma, it was
getting dark, because I felt the tears coming in my eyes. They were
perfectly happy like this for about three years, and then Lola was born
and they were happier still; but before that she used to take him up on
the mountains, above their shack, to look down at the camps, and watch
the stars, and she always used to see things in the future--how they
would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where
blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some
young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl
mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling hells among rogues,
but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth,
though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her
friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she
have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears,
pink as sea shells, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth.
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