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What changes had come! These were exemplified in the transformation fall had
wrought in the verdure along the trails. Only the great pines had not changed,
yet their needle foliage had a tinge of brown. The fern leaves that had waved
so beautifully green and graceful were now crisp and shrivelled; the grape
vines were yellow; the brown-eyed daisies were all gone; the sycamore trees
were turning and the cottonwoods had parted with their beauty. Likewise had
the walnut trees.
In places where Lucy could see the Rim she was astounded and delighted. She
had carried away a picture of the coloured walls, but now there was a blaze of
gold, purple, cerise, scarlet, all the hues of fire. Frost had touched maples,
aspens, oaks, with a magic wand. It seemed another and more beautiful forest
land that she was entering. Up and down, everywhere along the trail, her horse
waded through autumn leaves. The level branches of spruce and pine, that
reached close to her, were littered with fallen leaves, wrinkled and dried.
How different the sound of hoofs! Now they padded, rustled, when before they
had crunched and cracked.
The melancholy days had come. As the sunset hues failed Lucy saw purple haze
as thick as smoke filling the hollows. The aisles were deserted of life, sear
and brown, shading into twilight. She rode down into the deep forest glen and
up out of it before overtaken by night. How comforting the dusky halls of the
woodland! Assuredly she was going to find out something about herself when she
could think it out. Sam's little brother talked whenever the trail was steep
and his horse lagged close to Lucy's. Homely bits of news, pertaining to his
simple life, yet Lucy found them sweet.
The hunter's moon lighted the last mile of the ride up to the Denmeade
clearing. Weird, moon-blanched, the great wall seemed to welcome her. What had
come to her under its looming shadow? Black and silent the forest waved away
to the dim boundaries. Lucy forgot her weariness. The baying of the hounds
loosened the thrills that had been in abeyance, waiting for this moment when
she rode up the lane. She peered for the white gleam of her canvas tent. Gone!
Had Clara moved into the cabin? Then she made out that the tent wall had been
boarded half-way up and the roof shingled. A light shone through the canvas.
Lucy could scarcely wait to get her baggage from the boy and to tell him what
to do.
Her voice stirred scrape of chair and flying footsteps inside the tent. The
door swept open and Clara rushed out with a cry of welcome. Even in the
poignant joy of the moment Lucy, as she folded Clara in a close embrace,
missed the fragile slenderness that had characterised her sister's form. Then
they were in the brightly lighted tent, where for a little the sweetness of
reunion precluded all else.
"Let go of me, so I can see you," said Lucy, breaking away from her sister.
"Oh, Clara!"
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That was all she could say to this beautiful brown-faced, radiant-eyed
apparition.
"Yes, I'm well!" cried Clara. "Strong as a bear. Almost fat! I wondered what
you'd think...You see, your wilderness home and people have cured me...More!
Oh, sister, I'm afraid to say it--but I'm happy, too."
"Darling! Am I dreaming?" burst out Lucy, in a rapture. "What has happened?
How have you done it? Who?...Why, I worried myself sick about you! Look at me!
I'm thin, pale. And here you show yourself...Oh, Clara, you're just lovely!
What have you been doing?"
"Simple as A B C, as Danny says," retuned Clara. "When you left I just felt
that I would get well and--and all right again--or I'd die trying. I took up
your work, and I've done it. I worked every way they'd let me. I rode and
climbed and walked every day with Joe. And eat? Oh, I've been a little pig!"
"Every day with Joe!" echoed Lucy, with eyes of love, hope, fear, doubt upon
this strange sister. "Has that changed you so wonderfully?"
When had Lucy seen such a smile on Clara's face?
"Yes. But no more than taking up your work," she rejoined, with sweet
seriousness. "Joe cured my body. He got me out into the fields and the woods.
I really wasn't so sick. I was weak, starved, spiritless. Then your work with
the children, with all the Denmeades, showed me how life is worth living. I
just woke up."
"I don't care who or what has done it," cried Lucy, embracing her again.
"Bless Joe!...But, oh, Clara, if he was the way Edd said he was before I
left--what is he now?"
"He loves me, yes," said Clara, with a dreaming smile.
Lucy's lips trembled shut on a query she feared to utter, and she endeavoured
to conceal her emotion by lifting her baggage to the bed.
"Well, that's no news," she said lightly. "How's my wild-bee hunter?"
"I can't see any change," replied Clara, laughing. "You wrote me only twice,
and him not at all."
"Him? Clara, did he expect to hear from me?" asked Lucy, facing about.
"I'm not sure, but he wanted to. Every night when he got home from his
work--he's gathering honey now--he'd come to me and ask if I'd heard. I think
he missed you and Mertie. He wondered how she'd get along in Felix."
"I ought to have written," said Lucy, as much to herself as to Clara. "But I
found it hard. I wanted to...I don't know where I stand. Perhaps now...Heigho!
Well, as for Mertie, he needn't have worried about her."
"Lucy, I confess I'm curious myself," replied Clara.
"Mertie was just a crazy country girl who'd been badly influenced," went on
Lucy. "She had good stuff in her, as I guessed, and she really cared for Bert.
Mertie wanted something, she didn't know what. But I knew. And I gave it to
her. I bought her everything she fancied and I took her everywhere. It did not
seem possible to me that anyone could be so wildly happy as she was. And Bert?
Goodness! It was good to see him...They're married, and, I'm sure, settled for
life."
"Married! Well, Lucy Watson, you are a worker. So that was why you took them
to Felix?" replied Clara.
"Not at all. But it fell in with the natural order of things. Don't you
breathe it. Mertie and Bert will be out here to-morrow to surprise the folks.
They'll be glad. I wonder how Edd will take it."
"He'll be happy," mused Clara. "He loves that flibbertigibbet...So they're
married. It seems about all young people can do."
"Are you speaking for yourself, or for me, sister?" queried Lucy teasingly.
"Not for myself, surely...Lucy, I think I hear Allie calling us to supper."
The welcome accorded Lucy in that simple household was something even more
satisfying that the meed of praise she had received at Felix. Edd Denmeade was
not present. His father said he was out, camping on a long bee hunt. Lucy
tried to ward off conviction that his absence was a relief. Yet she wanted to
see him. The feelings were contrary.
Lucy parried the queries about Mertie by saying that she would be home
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to-morrow to answer for herself. The clamour of the children was subdued by
the delivery of sundry presents from town. For that matter, Lucy did not
forget any of the Denmeades. She had remembered what joy a gift brought to
them, one and all. For Edd she had purchased a magnifying glass and a field
glass, for use in his study of bees.
"Sis, what'd you bring me?" queried Clara jealously when they were back in the
tent.
"Myself. Is that enough?" teased Lucy.
"Of course...Lucy, you must have spent a lot of money," said Clara seriously.
"I shore did. All I had except what you wrote for. I have that."
"It's very--good of you," replied Clara.
"What'd you need so much money for?" asked Lucy frankly. "It surprised me."
"It's--I--Well, there's a woman in Kingston," said Clara, averting her face.
"I owed her money. I hated to tell you before, hoping she'd wait till I could
earn some. But she wrote me."
"How did she know you were here?" queried Lucy in surprise.
"I wrote to her first--about it," returned Clara.
"You mustn't owe money to anyone," said Lucy decidedly. "Send her a money [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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