第70章 CHAPTER XIII(9)

But there won't be much to-night, because I want you to see the moon rise over the lake."

He went away and the Girl removed her dress and spread it on the couch. Then she bathed her face and hands. When she saw the discoloured cloth, it proved that she had been painted, and made her very indignant.

Yet she could not be altogether angry, for that flush of colour had saved the Harvester from being pitied by his friend. She stood a long time before the mirror, staring at her gaunt, colourless face; then she went to the dressing table and committed a crime. She found a box of cream and rubbed it on for a foundation.

Then she opened some pink powder, and carefully dusted her cheeks.

"I am utterly ashamed," she said to the image in the mirror, "but he has done so much for me, he is so, so----I don't know a word big enough----that I can't bear him to see how ghastly I am, how little worth it. Perhaps the food, better air, and outdoor exercise will give me strength and colour soon. Until it does I'm afraid I'm going to help out all I can with this. It is wonderful how it changes one. I really appear like a girl instead of a bony old woman."

Then she looked over the dresses, selected a pretty white princesse, slipped it on, and went to the kitchen.

But the Harvester would not have her there. He seated her at the dining table, beside the window overlooking the lake, lighted a pair of his home-made candles in his finest sticks, and placed before her bread, butter, cold meat, milk, and fruit, and together they ate their first meal in their home.

"If I had known," said the Harvester, "Granny Moreland is a famous cook. She is a Southern woman, and she can fry chicken and make some especial dishes to surpass any one I ever knew. She would have been so pleased to come over and get us an all-right supper."

"I'd much rather have this, and be by ourselves," said the Girl.

"Well, you can bank on it, I would," agreed the Harvester. "For instance, if any one were here, Imight feel restrained about telling you that you are exactly the beautiful, flushed Dream Girl I have adored for months, and your dress most becoming. You are a picture to blind the eyes of a lonely bachelor, Ruth."

"Oh why did you say that?" wailed the Girl. "Now I've got to feel like a sneak or tell you----and I didn't want you to know."

"Don't you ever tell me or any one else anything you don't want to," said the Harvester roundly. "It's nobody's business!"

"But I must! I can't begin with deception. I was fool enough to think you wouldn't notice. Man, they painted me! I didn't know they were doing it, but when it all washed off, I looked so ghastly I almost frightened myself. I hunted through the boxes they put up for you and found some pink powder----"

"But don't all the daintiest women powder these days, and consider it indispensable? The clerk said so, and I've noticed it mentioned in the papers. I bought it for you to use."

"Yes, just powder, but Man, I put on a lot of cold cream first to stick the powder good and thick. Oh I wish I hadn't!"

"Well since you've told it, is your conscience perfectly at ease? No you don't! You sit where you are!

You are lovely, and if you don't use enough powder to cover the paleness, until your colour returns, I'll hold you and put it on. I know you feel better when you appear so that every one must admire you."

"Yes, but I'm a fraud!"

"You are no such thing!" cried the Harvester hotly.

"There hasn't a woman in ten thousand got any such rope of hair. I have been seeing the papers on the hair question, too. No one will believe it's real. If they think your hair is false, when it is natural, they won't be any more fooled when they think your colour is real, and it isn't. Very soon it will be and no one need ever know the difference. You go on and fix up your level best. To see yourself appearing well will make you ambitious to become so as soon as possible."

"Harvester-man," said the Girl, gazing at him with wet luminous eyes, "for the sake of other women, Icould wish that all men had an oath to keep, and had been reared in the woods."

"Here is the place we adjourn to the moon," cried the Harvester. "I don't know of anything that can cure a sudden accession of swell head like gazing at the heavens.

One finds his place among the atoms naturally and instantaneously with the eyes on the night sky. Should you have a wrap? You should! The mists from the lake are cool. I don't believe there is one among my orders. I forgot that. But upstairs with mother's clothing there are several shawls and shoulder capes.

All of them were washed and carefully packed. Would you use one, Ruth?"

"Why not give it to me. Wouldn't she like me to wear her things better than to have them lying in moth balls?"

The Harvester looked at her and shook his head, marvelling.

"I can't tell how pleased she would be," he said.

"Where are her belongings?" asked the Girl. "Icould use them to help furnish the house, and it wouldn't appear so strange to you."

The Harvester liked that.

"All the washed things are in those boxes upstairs;also some fine skins I've saved on the chance of wanting them. Her dishes are in the bottom of the china closet there; she was mighty proud of them. The furniture and carpets were so old and abused I burned them. I'll go bring a wrap."

He took the candle and climbed the stairs, soon returning with a little white wool shawl and a big pink coverlet.

"Got this for her Christmas one time," he said. "She'd never had a white one and she thought it was pretty."

He folded it around the Girl's shoulders and picked up the coverlet.

"You're never going to take that to the woods!" she cried.

"Why not?"

She took it in her hands to find a corner.

"Just as I thought! It's a genuine Peter Hartman!

It's one of the things that money can't buy, or, rather, one that takes a mint of money to own. They are heirlooms. They are not manufactured any more.

At the art store where I worked they'd give you fifty dollars for that. It is not faded or worn a particle.

It would be lovely in my room; you mustn't take a treasure like that out of doors."

"Ruth, are you in earnest?" demanded the Harvester.