“O, how lovely!” cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms dropping like mist-tips from among them.  “And we’re too exclusive here, for him to be let in.”

Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never do.  Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback.

“Boy!  Here! toss up your load!”

The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels drooping all about him.

Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers toward them with a smile.

“Such a quantity—­for everybody!” said Sylvie, as he put them into her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches.  “How kind you were, Mr. Sherrett!  We’ve longed so to find some of these, haven’t we Amata?  Has anybody got a newspaper, or two?  We’d better keep them all together till we get home.”  And she coiled the sprays carefully round and round into a heap.

No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf; she could thank innocently “for everybody”; but she knew very well what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for.

In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into her lap.

She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to catch it.  Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now.  It was one of his very, very own that he spent for her that day.  A girl feels a strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her.

It is useless to analyze and explain.  Sylvie did not stop to do it, neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them.  That October afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, some time.  Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take the night train up),—­“Why shouldn’t we have this piece of our lives as well as the rest, Auntie?  Why should two years be cribbed off?  There won’t be any too much of it, and there won’t be any of it just like this.”

Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him on his cheek, saying nothing.

But to herself she said, after he had gone,—­

“I don’t see why, either.  They would be so happy, waiting it out together.  And there never is any time like this time.  How is anybody sure of the rest of it?”