第90章 CHAPTER XVI(5)

"David, build us a house exactly similar to this over there on the hill, and let us live out here also. I'd love it. Would you, Clara?"

"I don't know. I never lived in the country. One thing is sure: If I tried it, I'd prefer this to any other place I ever saw. David, won't you take me far enough up the hill that I can look from the top to the lake?"

"Certainly," said the Harvester. "Excuse us a little while, Ruth!"

As soon as they were gone the Girl turned to the doctor.

"Doctor Carey, David says you are great. Won't you exercise your art on me. I am not at all well, and oh! I'd so love to be strong and sound."

"Will you tell me," asked the doctor, "just enough to show me what caused the trouble?"

"Bad air and water, poor light and food at irregular times, overwork and deep sorrow; every wrong condition of life you could imagine, with not a ray of hope in the distance, until now. For the sake of the Harvester, Iwould be well again. Please, please try to cure me!"

So they talked until the doctor thought he knew all he desired, and then they went to see the gold flower garden.

"I call this simply superb," said he, taking a seat beneath the tree roof of her porch. "Young woman, Idon't know what I'll do to you if you don't speedily grow strong here. This is the prettiest place I ever saw, and listen to the music of that bubbling, gurgling little creek!"

"Isn't he wonderful?" asked the Girl, looking up the hill, where the tall form of the Harvester could be seen moving around. "Just to see him, you would think him the essence of manly strength and force. And he is!

So strong! Into the lake at all hours, at the dry-house, on the hill, grubbing roots, lifting big pillars to support a bridge roof, and with it all a fancy as delicate as any dreaming girl. Doctor, the fairies paint the flowers, colour the fruit, and frost the windows for him; and the winds carry pollen to tell him when his growing things are ready for the dry-house. I don't suppose I can tell you anything new about him; but isn't he a perpetual surprise? Never like any one else! And no matter how he startles me in the beginning, he always ends by convincing me, at least, that he is right."

"I never loved any other man as I do him," said the doctor. "I ushered him into the world when I was a young man just beginning to practise, and I've known him ever since. I know few men so scrupulously clean.

Try to get well and make him happy, Mrs. Langston.

He so deserves it."

"You may be sure I will," answered the Girl.

After the visitors had gone, the Harvester told her to place the old blue dishes as she would like to arrange them on her table, so he could get a correct idea of the size, and he left to put a few finishing strokes on the bridge cover. She went into the dining-room and opened the china closet. She knew from her peep in the work-room that there would be more pieces than she had seen before; but she did not think or hope that a full half dozen tea set and plates, bowl, platter, and pitcher would be waiting for her.

"Why Ruth, what made you tire yourself to come down? I intended to return in a few minutes."

"Oh Man!" cried the laughing Girl, as she clung pantingly to a bridge pillar for support, "I just had to come to tell you. There are fairies! Really truly ones!

They have found the remainder of the willow dishes for me, and now there are so many it isn't going to be a table at all. It must be a little cupboard especially for them, in that space between the mantel and the bookcase.

There should be a shining brass tea canister, and a wafer box like the arts people make, and I'll pour tea and tend the chafing dish and you can toast the bread with a long fork over the coals, and we will have suppers on the living-room table, and it will be such fun."

"Be seated!" cried the Harvester. "Ruth, that's the longest speech I ever heard you make, and it sounded, praise the Lord, like a girl. Did Doc say he would fix something for you?"

"Yes, such a lot of things! I am going to shut my eyes and open my mouth and swallow all of them. I'm going to be born again and forget all I ever knew before I came here, and soon I will be tagging you everywhere, begging you to suggest designs for my pencil, and I'll simply force life to come right for you."

The Harvester smiled.

"Sounds good!" he said. "But, Ruth, I'm a little dubious about force work. Life won't come right for me unless you learn to love me, and love is a stubborn, contrary bulldog element of our nature that won't be driven an inch. It wanders as the wind, and strikes us as it will. You'll arrive at what I hope for much sooner if you forget it and amuse yourself and be as happy as you can. Then, perhaps all unknown to you, a little spark of tenderness for me will light in your breast;and if it ever does we will buy a fanning mill and put it in operation, and we'll raise a flame or know why."

"And there won't be any force in that?"

"What you can't compel is the start. It's all right to push any growth after you have something to work on."

"That reminds me," said the Girl, "there is a question I want to ask you."

"Go ahead!" said the Harvester, glancing at her as he hewed a joist.

She turned away her face and sat looking across the lake for a long time.

"Is it a difficult question, Ruth?" inquired the Harvester to help her.

"Yes," said the Girl. "I don't know how to make you see."

"Take any kind of a plunge. I'm not usually dense."

"It is really quite simple after all. It's about a girl----a girl I knew very well in Chicago. She had a problem----and it worried her dreadfully, and I just wondered what you would think of it."

The Harvester shifted his position so that he could watch the side of the averted face.

"You'll have to tell me, before I can tell you," he suggested.