Up and down the flowery path she went, snipping busily. On the stalks of larkspur and phlox she laid a mass of pink snapdragons and white candytuft, tucking in here and there sprays of just-opening baby's-breath to give a misty look to the basket. A bunch of English daisies came next; they blossomed so fast one didn't have to pick and choose among them; one could just cut and cut. And oughtn't there to be pansies? "Pansies--that's for thoughts." Those wonderful purple ones with a sprinkling of the yellow--no, yellow would spoil the color scheme of the basket. These white beauties were just the thing. How lovely it all looked, blue and white and pink and purple! But there wasn't much fragrance. Eye and nose searched hopefully. Heliotrope!--just a spray or two. There, now it was perfect. Anybody would be glad to see a basket like that coming. Only, she did wish some one else were to carry it, or else that she knew the people. It might not be so bad if she knew the people. Why shouldn't Laura or Trudy take it? Elliott walked very slowly up to the house, debating the question. A week ago she wouldn't have debated; she would have said, "Oh, I can't possibly." Or so she thought. "How beautiful!" said Aunt Jessica's voice from the kitchen window. "You have made an exquisite thing, dear." Elliott rested the basket on the window ledge and surveyed it proudly. "Isn't it lovely? And I don't think cutting this has hurt the borders a bit." "I am sure not." Aunt Jessica's busy hands went back to her yellow mixing-bowl. "You know where the Gordons live, don't you?--in the big brick house at the cross-roads." "Yes," said Elliott, and her feet carried her out of the yard, stopping only long enough to let her get her pink parasol from the hall, and down the hill toward the cross-roads. It was odd about Elliott's feet, when she hadn't quite made up her mind whether or not she would go. Her feet seemed to have no doubt of it. The pink parasol threw a becoming light on her face, as she knew it would, and the odor of heliotrope rose pleasantly in her nostrils as she walked along. But the basket grew heavy, astonishingly heavy. She wouldn't have believed a culling-basket with a few flowers in it could weigh so much. The farther Elliott walked, the heavier it grew. And she hadn't gone a quarter of the way, either. A horse's feet coming up rapidly behind her turned the girl's steps to the side of the road. The horse drew abreast and stopped, prancing. "Want a lift?" asked the man in the wagon. He was a big grizzled farmer, a friend of her uncle's. Elliott nodded, smiling. "Oh, thank you!" "Purty flowers you've got there." "Aren't they lovely! Aunt Jessica is sending them to Mrs. Gordon." "That's right! That's right! Say, just look at them pansies, now! Flowers, they don't do nothin' but grow for that aunt of yours. She don't have to much more 'n look at 'em." Elliott laughed. "She weeds them, I happen to know. I helped her this afternoon."