h a sarsaparilla plant and this yam vine. It grows on your veranda
too----the rattle box, you remember. The leaves and seeding arrangements
are wonderful. You can do any number of things with them, and all will
be new."

He called her attention to and brought her samples of ginger leaves,
Indian hemp, queen-of-the-meadow, cone-flower, burdock, baneberry, and
Indian turnip, as he harvested them in turn. When they came to the large
beds of orange pleurisy root the Girl cried out with pleasure.

"We will take its prosaic features first," said the Harvester. "It is
good medicine and worth handling. Forget that! The Bird Woman calls it
butterfly flower. That's better. Now try to analyze a single bloom of
this gaudy mass, and you will see why there's poetry coming."

He knelt beside the Girl, separating the blooms and pointing out their
marvellous colour and construction. She leaned against his shoulder, and
watched with breathless interest. As his bare head brought its mop of
damp wind-rumpled hair close, she ran her fingers through it, and with
her handkerchief wiped his forehead.

"Sometimes I almost wish you'd get sick," she said irrelevantly.

"In the name of common sense, why?" demanded the Harvester.

"Oh it must be born in the heart of a woman to want to mother
something," answered the Girl. "I feel sometimes as if I would like to
take care of you, as if you were a little fellow. David, I know why
your mother fought to make you the man she desired. You must have been
charming when small. I can shut my eyes and just see the boy you were,
and I should have loved you as she did."

"How about the man I am?" inquired the Harvester promptly. "Any leanings
toward him yet, Ruth?"

"It's getting worser and worser every day and hour," said the Girl. "I
don't understand it at all. I wouldn't try to live without you. I don't
want you to leave my sight. Everything you do is the way I would have
it. Nothing you ever say shocks or offends me. I'd love to render you
any personal service. I want to take you in my arms and hug you tight
half a dozen times a day as a reward for the kind and lovely things you
do for me."

A dull red flamed up the neck and over the face of the Harvester. One
arm lifted to the chair back, the other dropped across the table so that
the Girl was almost encircled.

"For the love of mercy, Ruth, why haven't I had a hint of this before?"
he cried.

"You said you'd hate me. You said you'd drop me in