Lassie listened wonderingly. "Next time!" she repeated questioningly, "what next time? Do you believe in a heaven for trees?"
"I am not sure of a heaven for anything," said Alva, "not an orthodox heaven. But I believe in an endless existence for every atom existing in the universe, and I believe that each atom determines the successive steps of its own future, and so a brave little pine-tree fills me with just as sincere admiration as any other species of bravery. 'Next time'! It will have a beautiful 'next time' in the heaven which means something so different from what we are taught, or here again on earth, or wherever its little growing spirit takes form again. I'm not wise enough to understand much of that, but I'm wise enough to know that there is a next time of so much infinitely greater importance than this time, that this time is really only of any importance at all in comparison just according to how we use it in preparation. That's part of the lesson that the tree teaches. But you can't understand me, Lassie, unless you are able to grasp my belief—my fixed conviction—that this world is only an instant in eternity. I couldn't live at all unless I had this belief and hope, and it's the key to everything with me; so please—please—give me credit for sincerity, at least."
Lassie looked thoroughly awed. "I'll try to see everything just as you do," she said.
Alva pressed her hand. "Thank you, dear."
Then they went on up the road.
Presently the sound of hammer and saw was heard, and the smell of wet plaster and burning rubbish came through the trees.
"Is it from your house?" Lassie asked, with her usual visible relief at the approach of the understandable.
"Yes, from my house," Alva answered. "They are very much occupied with my house; fancy buying a dear, old, dilapidated dwelling in the wilderness, and having to make it new and warm and bright and cheerful in a fortnight! Why, the tale of these two weeks will go down through all the future history of the country, I know. Such a fairy tale was never before. I shall become the Legend of Ledge, I feel sure."
The road, turning here, ended sharply in a large, solid, wooden gate, set deep in a thick hedge of pine trees.
"It is like a fairy tale!" Lassie cried delightedly; "a regular Tourangean porte with a guichet!"