The yellow August sunshine lay on the level prairies beyond the river. The shining thread of waters wound away across the landscape under a play of light and shadow. The clover sod at their feet was soft and green. The big golden sunflowers hung on their stalks along the border of the lawn, and overhead the ripple of the summer breezes in the cottonwoods made a music like pattering raindrops. Under their swaying boughs Leigh Shirley stood, a fair, sweet girl. And nothing in the languorous beauty of the midsummer afternoon could have been quite so pleasing without her presence there. She looked down at Thaine's big brown hand resting against her white arm, and then up to his handsome face. "It would only make trouble for, for everybody. No, I'm coming home with the crowd on the hayrack." She lifted her arm and began to pull the petals from a tiny sunflower that lay on the seat beside her. "Very well." There was no anger in Thaine's tone. "Do you remember the big sunflower we found to send to Prince Quippi, once?" "The one that should bring him straight from China to me, if he really cared for me?" Leigh asked. "You said that one was to tell him that you loved him and you knew it would bring him to you. But he never came." "It's a way my princes have of doing," Leigh said with a little laugh. "If I were in China and you should send me a sunflower, I'd know you wanted me to come back." "If I ever send you one you will know that I do," Leigh said. "Meantime, my prince will wear a sprig of alfalfa on his coat." "And a cockle burr in his whiskers, and cerulean blue overalls like mine, and he'll drudge along in a slow scrap with the soil till the soil gets him," Thaine added. "Like it got your father," Leigh commented. "Oh, he's just one sort of a man by himself," Thaine declared. "A pretty good sort, of course, else I'd never have recommended him to be my father. Good-by. I'll see you across the crowd tomorrow." He turned at once and left her. "The Cottonwoods" was a picturesque little grove grown in the last decade about a rocky run down which in the springtime a full stream swept. There was only a little ripple over a stony bed now, with shallow pools lost in the deeper basins here and there. The grasses lay flat and brown on the level prairie about it. Down the shaded valley a light cool breeze poured steadily. Beyond the stream a gentle slope reached far away to the foot of the three headlands--the purple notches of Thaine Aydelot's childhood fancies. The day was ideal. Such days come sometimes in a Kansas August. The young people of the Grass River neighborhood had made merry half of the morning in the grove, and as they gathered for the picnic lunch someone called out: "Jo Bennington, where's Thaine Aydelot? Great note for him to disappear when this Charity Ball was executed mainly for him." "Better ask Todd Stewart. He's probably had Thaine kidnaped for this occasion," somebody else suggested.