She glanced up and met Norris’ eyes. It was not easy for him to join in the chatter of the others, but he was thinking how she illuminated her own words. Manifestly she was not lacking in mind, and quite as evidently her brain was only the antechamber of her nature. She gave him the impression of “the heart at leisure from itself”. There was the unconsciousness of sheltered girlhood, but already, in bud, the suggestion of that big type of woman who, as years mellow her, touches with sympathy every life with which she comes in contact. What she now was, promised more in the future, as though Fate said, “I’m not through with her yet. I’ve plenty in reserve to go to her making.”
“Intelligence,” said Dick pompously, “is the tree of life in man, and the flower in woman—and one does not presume to criticize flowers.”
Mr. Davison changed his method of attack.
“Oh, of course I’m up against it,” he said, “with you three fresh from the academic halls. But I can tell you you’ll feel pretty lonely out here. The street-car conductors don’t talk Sanskrit in the West. They talk Swede.”
“Oh, this,—this is home!” cried Madeline, springing up as if to shake off the conversation. “You don’t know how I love it! It’s fresh and vigorous and its face is forward.” She flung out her arms and smiled radiantly down on the three young men, as though she were an embodiment of the ozone of the Northwest.
“Sing to us, please, Madeline,” said Dick.
“Very well, I will,” she said. “I’ll sing you a song I made myself yesterday, when I was happy because I was at home again. Perhaps it will tell you how I feel, for it’s a song of Minnesota.” She turned and nodded to Mr. Davison, and then slipped through the doors to the room where the piano stood.
The long shadows of afternoon lay across the lawn, and the grass, more green than ever in the level light, clasped the dazzling blue of the quiet waters. The three men stretched themselves in their easy chairs, as a stroked kitten stretches itself, with a lounging abandon which is forbidden to their sisters, as Madeline’s voice rose fresh and true and touched with the joy of youth.
“Ho, west wind off the prairie;
Ho, north wind off the pine;
Ho, myriad azure lakes, hill-clasped,
Like cups of living wine;
Ho, mighty river rolling;
Ho, fallow, field and fen;
By a thousand voices nature calls,
To fire the hearts of men.
”Ho, fragrance of the wheat-fields;
Ho, garnered hoards of flax;
Ho, whirling millwheel, ’neath the falls;
Ho, woodman’s ringing ax.
Man blends his voice with nature’s,
And the great chorus swells.
He adds the notes of home and love
To the tale the forest tells.
“Oh, young blood of the nation;
Oh, hope in a world of need;
The traditions of the fathers
Still be our vital seed.
Thy newer daughters of the West,
Columbia, mother mine,
Still hold to the simple virtues
Of field and stream and pine.”
The song stopped abruptly, and Dick sprang to his feet.