Michael O'Halloran (Children's Adventure Novel). Stratton-Porter Gene
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Mate of God and mother of me, Say, where is she, the Bearer of Morning, My Bringer of Song? Love in me waits to be born, Where is She, the Woman?
"'Where is she, the Woman?' The answer is 'Here!' 'Bearer of Morning,' 'Bringer of Song,' I adore you!"
"Oh Douglas, how beautiful!" cried Leslie. "My Man, can we think of anything save ourselves to-day? Can we make that basket?"
"It would be a bad start to give up our first undertaking together," he said.
"Of course!" she cried. "We must! We simply must find things. Father may call any minute. Let go my hand and follow behind me. Keep close, Douglas!"
"I should go before to clear the way," he suggested.
"No, I may miss rare flowers if you do," she objected.
"Go slowly, so I can watch before and overhead."
"Yes!" she answered. "There! There, Douglas!"
"Ah! There they are!" he exulted.
"But I can't take them!" she protested.
"Only a few, Leslie. Look before you! See how many there are!" he said.
"Douglas, could there be more wonderful flowers than the moccasins and slippers?" she asked.
"Scarcely more wonderful; there might be more delicate and lovely!"
"Farther! Let us go farther!" she urged.
Her cry closed the man's arms around her.
Then there was a long silence during which they stood on the edge of a small open space breathlessly worshipping, but it was the Almighty they were now adoring. Here the moss lay in a flat carpet, tinted deeper green. Water willow rolled its ragged reddish-tan hoops, with swelling bloom and leaf buds. Overflowing pitcher plants grew in irregular beds, on slender stems, lifting high their flat buds. But scattered in groups here and there, sometimes with massed similar colours, sometimes in clumps and variegated patches, stood the rare, early fringed orchis, some almost white, others pale lavender and again the deeper colour of the moccasins; while everywhere on stems, some a foot high, nodded the exquisite lavender and white showy orchis.
"Count!" he commanded.
Leslie pointed a slender finger indicating each as she spoke: "One, two, three—thirty-two, under the sweep of your arms, Douglas! And more! More by the hundred! Surely if we are careful not to kill them, the Lord won't mind if we take out a few for people to see, will He?"
"He must have made them to be seen!" said Douglas.
"And worshipped!" cried the girl.
"Douglas, why didn't the squaw——?" asked Leslie.
"Maybe she didn't come this far," he said. "Perhaps she knows by experience that these are too fragile to remove. You may not be able to handle them, Leslie."
"I'm going to try," she said. "But first I must make my basket. We'll go back to the osiers to weave it and then come here to fill it. Oh Douglas! Did you ever see such flower perfection in all your life?"
"Only in books! In my home country applied botany is a part of every man's education. I never have seen ragged or fringed orchids growing before. I have read of many fruitless searches for the white ones."
"So have I. They seem to be the rarest. Douglas, look there!"
"There" was a group of purple-lavender, white-lipped bloom, made by years of spreading from one root, until above the rank moss and beneath the dark tamarack branch the picture appeared inconceivably delicate.
"Yes! The most exquisite flowers I ever have seen!"
"And there, Douglas!" She pointed to another group. "Just the shade of the lavender on the toe of the moccasin—and in a great ragged mass! Would any one believe it?"
"Not without seeing it," he said emphatically.
"And there, Douglas! Exactly the colour of the moccasins—see that cluster! There are no words, Douglas!"
"Shall you go farther?" he asked.
"No," she answered. "I'm going back to weave my basket. There is nothing to surpass the orchids in rarity and wondrous beauty."
"Good!" he cried. "I'll go ahead and you follow."
So they returned to the osiers. Leslie pondered deeply a few seconds, then resolutely putting Douglas aside, she began cutting armloads of pale yellow osiers. Finding a suitable place to work, she swiftly and deftly selected perfect, straight evenly coloured ones, cutting them the same length, then binding the tip ends firmly with raffia she had brought to substitute for grass. Then with fine slips she began weaving, gradually spreading the twigs while inwardly giving thanks for the lessons she had taken in basketry. At last she held up a big, pointed, yellow basket.
"Ready!" she said.
"Beautiful!" cried Douglas.
Leslie carefully lined the basket with moss in which the flowers grew, working the heads between the open spaces she had left. She bent three twigs, dividing her basket top in exact thirds. One of these she filled with the whitest, one with stronger, and one with the deepest lavender, placing the tallest plants in the centre so that the outside ones would show completely. Then she lifted by the root exquisite showy orchis, lavender-hooded, white-lipped, the tiniest plants she could select and set them around the edge. She bedded the moss-wrapped roots in the basket and began bordering the rim and entwining the handle with a delicate vine. She looked up at Douglas, her face thrilled with triumph, flushed with exertion, her eyes humid with feeling, while he gazed at her stirred to the depth of his heart with sympathy and the wonder of possession.
"'Bearer of Morning,' you win!" he cried triumphantly. "There is no use going farther. Let me carry that to your father, and he too will say so."
"I have a reason for working out our plan," she said.
"Yes? May I know?" he asked.
"Surely!" she answered. "You remember what you told me about the Minturns. I can't live in a city and not have my feelings harrowed every day, and while I'd like to change everything wrong, I know I can't all of it, so what I can't cope with must be put aside; but this refuses, it is insistent. When you really think of it, that is so dreadful, Douglas. If they once felt what we do now, could it all go? There must be something left! You mention him oftener than any other one man, so you must admire him deeply; I know her as well as any woman I meet in society, better than most; I had thought of asking them to be the judges. She is interested in music and art; it would please her and be perfectly natural for me to ask her; you are on intimate terms with him from your offices being opposite; there could be no suspicion of any ulterior motive in having them. I don't know that it would accomplish anything, but it would let them know, to begin with, that we consider them friends; so it would be natural for them to come with us; if we can't manage more than that to-day, it will give us ground to try again."
"Splendid!" he said. "A splendid plan! It would let them see that at least our part of the world thinks of them together, and expects them to be friends. Splendid!"
"I have finished," said Leslie.
"I quite agree," answered Douglas. "No one could do better. That is the ultimate beauty of the swamp made manifest. There is the horn! Your father is waiting."
A surprise was also waiting. Mr. Winton had not only found the squaw who brought the first basket, but he had made her understand so thoroughly what was wanted that she had come with him, while at his suggestion she had replaced the moccasin basket as exactly as she could and also made an effort at decoration. She was smiling woodenly when Leslie and Douglas approached, but as Leslie's father glimpsed and cried out over her basket, the squaw frowned, drawing back.
"Where you find 'em?" she demanded.
"In the swamp!" Leslie nodded backward.
The squaw grunted disapprovingly. "Lowry no buy 'em! Sell slipper! Sell moccasin! No sell weed!"
Leslie looked with shining eyes at