“Things have a way of disappearing in the woods, unless they’re treated right. Took a fellow with me once when I went for pink-and-white lady’s-slippers, the big ones—they’re beauties. He was crazy to go, and he promised to keep the place to himself. You could have picked bushels there then. Now they’re all cleaned out.”
“But why? Did people dig them up?”
“Picked’em too close. Some things won’t stand being cleaned up the way most people clean up flowers in the woods. They’re free, and nobody’s responsible.”
In spite of her thoughts Elliott dimpled. “I think it is quite safe to take me.”
He grinned. “Maybe that’s why I do it.”
It was very pleasant, tramping along with Bruce in the bright day; pleasant, too, leaving the sunshine for the spicy coolness of the woods, and climbing up, up, among 140 great tree-trunks and mossy rocks and trickling mountain brooks. Or it would have been pleasant, if one could only have forgotten the reason that underlay their journey. But when they had reached Bruce’s secret spot and were cutting the wiry brown stems, and packing together carefully the spreading, many-fingered fronds so as not to break the delicate ferns, that undercurrent of numb consternation reasserted itself. Like Priscilla, Elliott felt a little shocked at the brightness of the sunshine, the blueness of the sky, and the beauty of the fern-filled glade.
“It was dreadful for him to be killed before he had done anything!” At last the words so long burning in her heart reached the tip of her tongue.
“Yes.” Bruce’s voice was sober. “It sure was hard.”
