In the Border Country | Page 8

are no bees here. You hear the
rumbling in the street below. I am glad to see you open your eyes--we
were growing worried. You remember you are at the hospital, do you
not? Would you like to see your husband? He is just outside the door."
She looked long at the nurse. "My husband," she murmured. "Oh, yes.
Does he know that I got away? How did you bring me back here? Tell
the doctor that--that I could not bear it and that he must take me
through without it. He--he will be glad--"
"The operation is over," said the nurse, "and you have nothing to bear,
now. You are just coming out of the ether. Do you understand?
Everything is all right. You have only to lie quiet, now, and you may
see your husband, if you wish. He wanted to see you as soon as you
were safely out of the wood, he said."
The tears gathered in her eyes, but she was too weak to wipe them.
"'Out of the wood,'" she whispered, "'out of the wood'! So that is what

they mean! But he will never go into that wood ... yes, call him in."

The Next Lesson
THE FARM BY THE FOREST
It was years afterward, and in October, the very climax of a late and
lingering autumn, that I sat by my friend one afternoon in the ripe
orchard and knew suddenly that we were going to speak of one of those
strange experiences of hers that, for me, set her more effectually apart
from others than any of her many and varied gifts and graces. As before,
we fell into the matter suddenly, with no warning, and at a light
question from me the like of which I must have asked her many times
with no such answer as I then got.
All about us lay the windfalls, piled evenly, rich heaps of sunset colour.
The better fruit gleamed through the boughs like fairy lamps and great
ladders leaned against these on which the men climbed, picking
carefully. Below them the maidservants, laughing and excited at this
pleasant change of labour, handed the baskets and filled the gaping
barrels. And up the ladders and through the trees and among the tinted
heaps raced and played the children of the house, sniffing the heady
flavour of the rich fruit, teasing the maids, cajoling the men, staggering
under the heavy baskets, pelting each other, even, with the crimson and
yellow globes, bringing each specially large and perfect one to their
mother for congratulation. She, stopping for the moment her strange,
jewelled embroidery, that alone would have marked her for an artist of
high powers, would lean over each boy and girl, murmuring her praise,
soothing in the same breath the unlucky ones who had not found the
most gorgeous fruit, warning the men not to trouble the yet unready
apples, quieting the maids if they grew too boisterous, an eye and an
ear for everyone and everything.
As the lowering sun struck full on the nearest heap of red and gold, and
turned the russet fruit on the bough to bronze nuggets wrapped in
leaves of wonderfully wrought jade, a sudden thought tempted me and I

spoke quickly, glancing slyly at her calm, contented face.
"Look at that colour!" I said, "does it not cry out to you to be painted?
Does it not make you remember that spring orchard of yours that
everyone praised so, and from which the great Master predicted your
future? Would you not like to escape from all this pleasant, tiny bustle,
this network of ceaseless demands upon your hands, your heart, your
brain, and once again attack a real work?"
She looked curiously at me.
"A real work?" she repeated.
"I mean an enduring work," I explained, "a thing from which you can
lift your hand some day and say, 'This is done. To the best of my power
it is finished. Let it stand, and judge me by it.'"
She nodded her head slowly and I saw that she was not really looking
at me, though she seemed to be, but beyond me, across the splendid
orchard piles, into the stacked gold of the corn far afield.
"That's it," she murmured, "that's just what I told her--'an enduring
work.' And what was it she said to me? Oh! I am going again--I am
partly there now! Don't you see it? Is that the Lower Orchard? Are
those the gray gables of the Farm?"
Her voice thrilled strangely and her eyes were staring, vague: it was as
if she hung between sleep and waking. I looked where she pointed, but
it was only an enormous ledge of gray rock, curiously slanted, and I
said so, softly.
"It is only