"Wish I could remember," he thought, "how I felt when I was a kid, and
walked alone across a room the first time without tumbling on my nose. I
wonder if it was as good as this?"
"This" was very good indeed, and would have been good anywhere--for Nick
was, according to his own way of putting it, a "crank" about doing well
whatever he undertook, and he knew now that he had conquered the
machine--but on such a road, and in the light and shade of orange groves,
it was superlative.
The vast plain, walled with mountains, was an endless city of domed green
temples, richly decorated with the gold of the late orange crop. Beyond
its boundary were vines, cut close in Spanish fashion, which perhaps the
Fathers had taught in Mission days; and there were tall, pink-trunked
eucalyptus trees from whose wood beautiful furniture could be made; then
cities of green and golden temples again, in a desert-frame of tawny
yellow. Everything that was not green was golden. The sun poured gold;
oranges blazed in golden splendour; and California poppies, golden with
orange hearts, swept in a yellow flame over the landscape.
"Gold under the earth, and gold over the earth," thought Nick. "That's
California!" And he thought, too, of the gold of Angela's hair.
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