e 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. My violets, spring beauties, anemones, and dutchman's breeches
here are always two weeks ahead of those in the woods. I am not afraid
of your not liking the location or the air. As for the cabin, if
you don't care for that, it's very simple. I'll transform it into a
laboratory and dry-house, and build you whatever you want, within my
means, over there on the hill just across Singing Water and facing
the valley toward Onabasha. That's a perfect location. The thing that
worries me is what you are going to do for company, especially while I
am away."

"Don't trouble yourself about anything," she said. "Just say in your
heart, 'she is going to be stronger than she ever has been in her life
in this lovely place, and she has more right now than she ever had or
hoped to have.' For one thing, I am going to study your books. I never
have had time before. While we sewed or embroidered, mother talked by
the hour of the great writers of the world, told me what they wrote,
and how they expressed themselves, but I got to read very little for
myself."

"Books are my company," said the Harvester.

"Do your friends come often?"

"Almost never! Doc and his wife come most, and if you look out some day
and see a white-haired, bent old woman, with a face as sweet as dawn,
coming up the bank of Singing Water, that will be my mother's friend,
Granny Moreland, who joins us on the north over there. She is frank and
brusque, so she says what she thinks with unmistakable distinctness,
but her heart is big and tender and her philosophy keeps her sweet and
kindly despite the ache of rheumatism and the weight of seventy years."

"I'd love to have her come," said the Girl. "Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Your favourite word," laughed the Harvester. "The reason lies with me,
or rather with my mother. Some day I will tell you the whole story,
and the cause. I thin