“I s'pose you cook?”
“I make a specialty of salads and sorbets,” smiled Kate. “I guess I could roast meat and make bread; but circumstances have not yet compelled me to do it. But I've a theory that an American woman can do anything she puts her mind to.”
The man laughed out loud,—a laugh quite out of proportion to the mild good humor of the remark; but it was evident that he could no longer conceal his delight at this companionship.
“How about raisin' flowers?” he asked. “Are you strong on that?”
“I've only to look at a plant to make it grow,” Kate cried, with enthusiasm. “When my friends are in despair over a plant, they bring it to me, and I just pet it a little, and it brightens up. I've the most wonderful fernery you ever saw. It's green, summer and winter. Hundreds of people stop and look up at it, it is so green and enticing, there above the city streets.”
“What city?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Mother's jest that way. She has a garden of roses. And the mignonette—”
But he broke off suddenly, and sat once more staring before him.
“But not a damned thing,” he added, with poetic pensiveness, “would grow in that gulch.”