"Over eating of too much rich food, you mean," laughed the Harvester. "I'd like to see any man expose his body to more differing extremes of weather than I do, and I'm never sick. It's because I am my own cook and so I live mostly on fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, and eggs, a few fish from the lake, a little game once in a great while or a chicken, and no hot drinks; plenty of fresh water, air, and continuous work out of doors. That's the prescription! I'd be ashamed to have rheumatism at your age. There's food in the cupboard if you grow hungry. I am going past one of the neighbours on my way to see about some work I want her to do."
The Harvester stopped for lunch, carried food to Belshazzar, and started straight across country, his mattock, with a bag rolled around the handle, on his shoulder. His feet sank in the damp earth at the foot of the hill, and he laughed as he leaped across Singing Water.
"You noisy chatterbox!" cried the man. "The impetus of coming down the curves of the hill keeps you talking all the way across this muck bed to the lake.
With small work I can make you a thing of beauty.
A few bushes grubbed, a little deepening where you spread too much, and some more mallows along the banks will do the trick. I must attend to you soon."
"Now what does the boy want?" laughed a white-haired old woman, as the Harvester entered the door.
"Mebby you think I don't know what you're up to!
I even can hear the hammering and the voices of the men when the wind is in the south. I've been wondering how soon you'd need me. Out with it!"
"I want you to get a woman and come over and spend a day with me. I'll come after you and bring you back.
I want you to go over mother's bedding and have what needs it washed. All I want you to do is to superintend, and tell me now what I will want from town for your work."
"I put away all your mother's bedding that you were not using, clean as a ribbon."
"But it has been packed in moth preventives ever since and out only four times a year to air, as you told me. It must smell musty and be yellow. I want it fresh and clean."
"So what I been hearing is true, David?"
"Quite true!" said the Harvester.
"Whose girl is she, and when are you going to jine hands?"
The Harvester lifted his clear eyes and hesitated.
"Doc Carey laid you in my arms when you was born, David. I tended you 'fore ever your ma did. All your life you've been my boy, and I love you same as my own blood; it won't go no farther if you say so. I'll never tell a living soul. But I'm old and 'til better weather comes, house bound; and I get mighty lonely.
I'd like to think about you and her, and plan for you, and love her as I always did you folks. Who is she, David? Do I know the family?"
"No. She is a stranger to these parts," said the unhappy Harvester.
"David, is she a nice girl 'at your ma would have liked?"
"She's the only girl in the world that I'd marry," said the Harvester promptly, glad of a question he could answer heartily. "Yes. She is gentle, very tender and----and affectionate," he went on so rapidly that Granny Moreland could not say a word, "and as soon as I bring her home you shall come to spend a day and get acquainted. I know you will love her! I'll come in the morning, then. I must hurry now. I am working double this spring and I'm off for the skunk cabbage bed to-day."
"You are working fit to kill, the neighbours say.
Slavin' like a horse all day, and half the night I see your lights burning."
"Do I appear killed?" laughingly inquired the Harvester.
"You look peart as a struttin' turkey gobbler," said the old woman. "Go on with your work! Work don't hurt a-body. Eat a-plenty, sleep all you ort, and you CAN'T work enough to hurt you."
"So the neighbours say I'm working now? New story, isn't it? Usually I'm too lazy to make a living, if I remember."
"Only to those who don't sense your purceedings, David. I always knowed how you grubbed and slaved an' set over them fearful books o' yours."
"More interesting than the wildest fiction," said the man. "I'm ****** some medicine for your rheumatism, Granny. It is not fully tested yet, but you get ready for it by cutting out all the salt you can. I haven't time to explain this morning, but you remember what Isay, leave out the salt, and when Doc thinks it's safe I'll bring you something that will make a new woman of you."
He went swinging down the road, and Granny Moreland looked after him.
"While he was talkin'," she muttered, "I felt full of information as a flock o' almanacs, but now since he's gone, 'pears to me I don't know a thing more 'an I did to start on."
"Close call," the Harvester was thinking. "Why the nation did I admit anything to her? People may talk as they please, so long as I don't sanction it, but Ihave two or three times. That's a fool trick. Suppose I can't find her? Maybe she won't look at me if I can.
Then I'd have started something I couldn't finish.
And if anybody thinks I'll end this by taking any girl Ican get, if I can't find Her, why they think wrongly.
Just the girl of my golden dream or no woman at all for me. I've lived alone long enough to know how to do it in comfort. If I can't find and win her I have no intention of starting a boarding house."
The Harvester began to laugh. " `I'd rather keep bachelor's hall in Hell than go to board in Heaven!' " he quoted gaily. "That's my sentiment too. If you can't have what you want, don't have anything. But there is no use to become discouraged before I start.
I haven't begun to hunt her yet. Until I do, I might as well believe that she will walk across the bridge and take possession just as soon as I get the last chair leg polished.
She might! She came in the dream, and to come actually couldn't be any more real. I'll make a stiff hunt of it before I give up, if I ever do. I never yet have made a complete failure of anything. But just now I am hunting skunk cabbage. It's precisely the time to take it."
