CHAPTER II
THINKING BACKWARD
Betty leaned over the rail, flinging the contents of the seed packets into the air and breathing a little prayer that the wind might carry them far and that none might "fall on stony ground."
"If I never see the flowers, some one else may," she thought. "I remember that old lady who lived in Pineville, poor blind Mrs. Tompkins. She was always telling about the pear orchard she and her husband planted the first year of their married life out in Ohio. Then they moved East, and she never saw the trees. 'But somebody has been eating the pears these twenty years,' she used to say. I hope my flowers grow for some one to see."
When she had tossed all the seeds away, Betty snuggled into one of the comfortable reed chairs and gave herself up to her own thoughts. Since leaving Washington, the novelty and excitement of the trip had thoroughly occupied her mind, and there had been little time for retrospection.
This bright morning, as the prairie land slipped past the train, Betty Gordon's mind swiftly re-
