"They ought to be cut." She stopped and unfastened a long tendril of
intertwined honeysuckle and bridal-wreath which had caught her hair.
"Everything ought to be cut and fixed, only--"
"It would be beyond pardon. If any one should attempt to change this
garden, death should be the penalty. One rarely sees such
old-fashioned flowers as are here, never in modern places."
"No one knows when many of them were planted, and nothing hurts
them." Stooping, Claudia picked from the ground a few violets and
lilies-of-the-valley growing around the trunk of an immense elm-tree
at the end of the path, then looked up.
"Don't let's go to the roses yet. I want to see what the sun-dial
says. This is the way my great-grandmother used to come to meet my
great-grandfather when she was a girl. Her parents wanted her to
marry some one else. She would slip out of the house and down this
path to that big magnolia-tree, from where she could see and not be
seen, and it was there they made their plans to run away."
"We will go there. It looks like a very nice place at which to make
plans."
Into Claudia's face color sprang quickly, and for a moment she drew
back. "Oh no! It is too beautiful to-day to make plans of any kind.
It is enough to just--live. You haven't seen half of Elmwood yet,
and you want to talk of--other things.
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