"Put it out! Put it out! Put it out!"
XX
JUST THEE AND ME
Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,
And minuting the long day's loss,
The cedar's shadow, slow and still,
Creeps o'er the dial of grey moss.
—Lowell.
The next day rose fairer than ever. Magnus came off at eight o'clock with "old guard privileges," and having also kind permission from the authorities to dine with his mother in the woods.
Now the ordering and preparing of this dinner had been a great joy to Mrs. Kindred; what though the correct dainties could not be had. Green corn to boil was an impossibility, even if a kettle could be found; and home-made rolls were far out of reach, and not all the canned things that were ever turned out could replace her own home-fed chickens and home-cured ham. The supplies from the baker were fresh and clean and well looking—yet Mrs. Kindred sighed, thinking of Violet's loaves of cake, and Cherry's pies.
Magnus, however, was not so critical, he did not see even such as these every day, and so enjoyed everything to his mother's heart's content. And as she feasted on her boy there was really no lack anywhere. The fair August lights and shades chased each other among cedars and oaks, the locusts hummed; the birds that had nestlings sped swiftly to and fro, bringing food. Fall after fall of rocky woods and winding road lay at their feet; below all, the white camp in its green setting, then the river—never twice the same. Far up in the north the Catskills lifted their blue, changeless heads.
It was all so wondrous and so new to Mrs. Kindred that she was watching it, taking it in, even when she thought she had no eyes but for Magnus. The hills bewitched her; the distant blue, the nearer green; on all sides she seemed to hear the silent chanting of her favourite psalm:
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Surely this was a place wherein to grow "strong in the Lord"; a place where to remember: