Laudersdale and I have been wondering how you amuse
yourself up here; and I make my discovery. You study animated nature;
that is to say, you draw Mrs. Laudersdale and me."
"Mistaken, Miss Helen. I draw only Mrs. Laudersdale; and do you call
that animated nature?"
"I wish you would draw. Mrs. Laudersdale _out._"
At this point Mrs. Laudersdale _fell_ out; but, without otherwise
stirring from his position than by moving an apparently careless arm,
Mr. Raleigh caught and restored her to her balance, as lightly as if
he had brushed a floating gossamer from the air to his finger. For the
first time, perhaps, in her life, a carnation blossomed an instant in
her cheek, then all was as before,--only two of the party felt on that
instant that in some mysterious manner their relations with each other
were entirely changed.
"But what _is_ it that you do with yourself?" persisted Helen. "Tell us,
that we may do likewise."
"Will you come and see?" he asked,--his eyes, however, on Mrs.
Laudersdale.
"Will you come in away from the lake to the brooks, and hang among the
alders and angle, dreaming, all day long? Or will you rise at dead of
night and go out on the lake with me and watch field after field of
white lilies flash open as the sun touches them with his spear? Or will
you lie during still noons up among the farmers' fields where myriad
bandrol corn-poppies flaunt over your head, and stain your finger-tips
with the red berries that hang like globes of light in the
palace-gardens of mites and midges, soaking yourself in hot sunshine and
south-winds and heavy aromatic earth-scents?"
"Come!" said Mrs.
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