"If this was only a rare growth," said she, "how people would rave over its beauty. Dorothy, take warning--don't be common! Always remember old gardener Jake's words to us when we were little: 'Make yerselves skeerce, young ladies, and y'ell be valley'd accordin'.' But what's the use of trying to teach wisdom to a girl who shows she's chock full of black superstitions!" For beyond a doubt Dorothy was earnestly searching for a four-leaf clover, and presently she held out a five-leaf specimen for Sybil to look at. But she waved it away, gloomily misquoting: "That clover doth protest too much, methinks. You will do better to cling to the three-leaf, that, promising nothing, has no power to disappoint you, Dorrie!" "Oh, but I'm looking for the four-leaf for _you_, Sib dear! If I find it, you will get the introduction you long for without another such disappointment as yesterday." "Oh, don't!" cried Sybil, leaning her brow against a tree trunk; "don't talk about it!" though that was exactly what they had come out there for--to talk over the failure of Sybil's last, best, most natural seeming plan for an accidental meeting with the woman of her dreams. She was busy winking back her tears when Dorothy gave an exclamation, thrust out her hand to brush aside a big, yellow-belted, booming bumble-bee, then plucked and held up triumphantly a four-leaf clover, and, her face all flushed with heat and excitement, she cried: "See that! She's yours, dear! The Woman of Fate--she's yours! Now you see if she isn't!" Sybil took the little emblem of good luck, and, putting her arm around her sister's waist to hug her close, she laughed: "Oh, Dorrie, for a girl who says her prayers every night and morning, you are the most superstitious little beast--what's that?" "It's her!" answered Dorothy, in ungrammatical delight; and Sybil, catching some of her spirit, held the little emblem above her head, crying, laughingly: "Now let the poor leaf get in its fine work!" The words were scarcely out of her lips when clear and sharp there rose the sound of metal's ringing blow against stone, followed by a quick "Ho--lá" in a woman's voice, and the instant stoppage of the regular "click-klack, click-klack" of a trotting horse.