“Will you go, mother?” asked Elnora.
“I have a little work that should be done,”
said Mrs. Comstock. “Could you spare me?
Where do you want to go?”
“We will go down to Aunt Margaret’s and
see her a few minutes and get Billy. We will
be back in time for supper.”
Mrs. Comstock smiled as she watched them down the
road. What a splendid-looking pair of young creatures
they were! How finely proportioned, how full
of vitality! Then her face grew troubled as she
saw them in earnest conversation. Just as she
was wishing she had not trusted her precious girl
with so much of a stranger, she saw Elnora stoop to
lift a branch and peer under. The mother grew
content. Elnora was thinking only of her work.
She was to be trusted utterly.
WHEREIN THE LIMBERLOST SINGS FOR PHILIP, AND THE TALKING TREES TELL
GREAT SECRETS
A few days later Philip handed Elnora a sheet of paper
and she read: “In your condition I should
think the moth hunting and life at that cabin would
be very good for you, but for any sake keep away from
that Grosbeak person, and don’t come home with
your head full of granger ideas. No doubt he
has a remarkable voice, but I can’t bear untrained
singers, and don’t you get the idea that a June
song is perennial. You are not hearing the music
he will make when the four babies have the scarlet
fever and the measles, and the gadding wife leaves
him at home to care for them then. Poor soul,
I pity her! How she exists where rampant cows
bellow at you, frogs croak, mosquitoes consume you,
the butter goes to oil in summer and bricks in winter,
while the pump freezes every day, and there is no
earthly amusement, and no society! Poor things!
Can’t you influence him to move? No wonder
she gads when she has a chance! I should die.
If you are thinking of settling in the country, think
also of a woman who is satisfied with white and brown
to accompany you! Brown! Of all deadly colours!
I should go mad in brown.”
Elnora laughed while she read. Her face was dimpling,
as she returned the sheet. “Who’s
ahead?” she asked.
“Who do you think?” he parried.
“She is,” said Elnora. “Are
you going to tell her in your next that R. B. Grosbeak
is a bird, and that he probably will spend the winter
in a wild plum thicket in Tennessee?”
“No,” said Philip. “I shall
tell her that I understand her ideas of life perfectly,
and, of course, I never shall ask her to deal with
oily butter and frozen pumps—”
“—and measley babies,” interpolated
Elnora.
“Exactly!” said Philip. “At
the same time I find so much to counterbalance those
things, that I should not object to bearing them myself,
in view of the recompense. Where do we go and
what do we do to-day?”
“We will have to hunt beside the roads and around
the edge of the Limberlost to-day,” said Elnora.
“Mother is making strawberry preserves, and
she can’t come until she finishes. Suppose
we go down to the swamp and I’ll show you what
is left of the flower-room that Terence O’More,
the big lumber man of Great Rapids, made when he was
a homeless boy here. Of course, you have heard
the story?”
