Singing Water is across the drive there to talk to you always. It comes pelting down so fast it never freezes, so it makes music all winter, and the birds are so numerous you'll have to go to bed early for they'll wake you by dawn. I noticed this room was going to be full of sunshine when I built it, and I craved only brightness for you, so I coaxed all of it to stay that I could. Every stroke is the work of my hands, and all of the furniture.
I hope you will like it. This is the room of which I've been telling you, Ruth. Go in and take possession, and I'll entreat God and all His ministering angels to send you sunshine and joy."
He opened the door, guided her inside, closed it, and went swiftly to his work.
The Girl stood and looked around her with amazed eyes. The floor was pale yellow wood, polished until it shone like a table top. The casings, table, chairs, dressing table, chest of drawers, and bed were solid curly maple. The doors were big polished slabs of it, each containing enough material to veneer all the furniture in the room. The walls were of plaster, tinted yellow, and the windows with yellow shades were curtained in dainty white. She could hear the Harvester carrying the load from the wagon to the front porch, the clamour of the barn yard; and as she went to the north window to see the view, a shining peacock strutted down the walk and went to the Harvester's hand for grain, while scores of snow-white doves circled over his head.
She stepped on deep rugs of yellow goat skins, and, glancing at the windows on either side, she opened the door.
Outside it lay a porch with a railing, but no roof.
On each post stood a box filled with yellow wood-flowers and trailing vines of pale green. A big tree rising through one corner of the floor supplied the cover. A gate opened to a walk leading to the driveway, and on either side lay a patch of sod, outlined by a deep hedge of bright gold. In it saffron, cone-flowers, black-eyed Susans, golden-rod, wild sunflowers, and jewel flower grew, and some of it, enough to form a yellow line, was already in bloom. Around the porch and down the walk were beds of yellow violets, pixie moss, and every tiny gold flower of the woods. The Girl leaned against the tree and looked around her and then staggered inside and dropped on the couch.
"What planning! What work!" she sobbed. "What taste! Why he's a poet! What wonderful beauty!
He's an artist with earth for his canvas, and growing things for colours."
She lay there staring at the walls, the beautiful wood-work and furniture, the dressing table with its array of toilet articles, a low chair before it, and the thick rug for her feet. Over and over she looked at everything, and then closed her eyes and lay quietly, too weary and overwhelmed to think. By and by came tapping at the door, and she sprang up and crossing to the dressing table straightened her hair and composed her face.
"Ajax demands to see you," cried a gay voice.
The Girl stepped outside.
"Don't be frightened if he screams at you," warned the Harvester as she passed him. "He detests a stranger, and he always cries and sulks."
It was a question what was in the head of the bird as he saw the strange looking creature invading his domain, and he did scream, a wild, high, strident wail that delighted the Harvester inexpressibly, because it sent the Girl headlong into his arms.
"Oh, good gracious!" she cried. "Has such a beautiful bird got a noise in it like that? Why I've fed them in parks and I never heard one explode before."
Then how the Harvester laughed.
"But you see you are in the woods now, and this is not a park bird. It will be the test of your power to see how soon you can coax him to your hand."
"How do I work to win him?"
"I am afraid I can't tell you that," said the Harvester.
"I had to invent a plan for myself. It required a long time and much petting, and my methods might not avail for you. It will interest you to study that out.
But the member of the family it is positively essential that you win to a life and death allegiance is Belshazzar.
If you can make him love you, he will protect you at every turn. He will go before you into the forest and all the crawling, creeping things will get out of his way.
He will nose around the flowers you want to gather, and if he growls and the hair on the back of his neck rises, never forget that you must heed that warning. A few times I have not stopped for it, and I always have been sorry. So far as anything animate or uncertain footing is concerned, you are always perfectly safe if you obey him. About touching plants and flowers, you must confine yourself to those you are certain you know, until I can teach you. There are gorgeous and wonderfully attractive things here, but some of them are rank poison. You won't handle plants you don't know, until you learn, Ruth?"
"I will not," she promised instantly.
She went to the seat under the porch tree and leaning against the trunk she studied the hill, and the rippling course of Singing Water where it turned and curved before the cabin, and started across the vivid little marsh toward the lake. Then she looked at the Harvester.
He seated himself on the low railing and smiled at her.
"You are very tired?" he asked.
"No," she said. "You are right about the air being better up here. It is stimulating instead of depressing."
"So far as pure air, location, and water are concerned," said the Harvester, "I consider this place ideal. The lake is large enough to cool the air and raise sufficient moisture to dampen it, and too small to make it really cold and disagreeable. The slope of the hill gives perfect drainage. The heaviest rains do not wet the earth for more than three hours. North, south, and west breezes sweep the cool air from the water to the cabin in summer.
The same suns warm us here on the winter hillside.
