Rose, however, lost no time thinking of her lover,—if lover she regarded him,—but flew about the final household duties, humming happily, and now and then breaking into unfinished snatches of song like a wild wood bird. Evidently the slight burn no longer troubled her and was already forgotten.
Her work finished, she joined the two men, who were smoking their pipes before the blazing fire, and seated herself crosslegged at her grandfather's feet. Mike got up leisurely from his post beneath his master's chair, stretched forward and back, yawned prodigiously, and then lay down with his shaggy head on the girl's bare legs. As Donald talked, Rose played with the dog, rolling him over and rubbing his underbody until his mouth opened in a grotesque animal imitation of her own wonderful smile, which constantly flashed to her lips like a ray of light, only to vanish as swiftly, and leave its slowly fading afterglow in her deep eyes.
"Dr. Mac," said the child timidly, during a moment of contented silence, her natural use of his intimate nickname, both startling and pleasing Donald, "yo-all allowed thet yo' doctored children mostly. I loves babies more'n anything else in the world, 'ceptin' only grandpap; they're so purty an' sweet an' helpless-like, thet I reckon the Lord loves 'em powerful, an' the' haint nothin' finer then takin' keer of 'em."
Donald nodded with pleasure, and the girl continued, dreamily:
"I allows thet, when God made people an' put the breath o' life inter them, he hadn't quite got outer his mind what he done on an earlier day, an' was jest improvin' on hit; fer hit sorter seems ter me thet big men an' women air like growin' trees, fashioned fer ter stand up agin ther eliments an' storms most times; but babies air like tiny leetle flowers—so weak an' tender thet we hev ter take mighty good keer of 'em. Don't yo' never feel, somehow, like yo' was tendin' a gyarden of purty flowers, an' a-drivin' away the grubs an' bugs what would make 'em wilt an' die?"
"To be sure I do, my child," he answered, wondering if she realized how apt was her simile, since most disease is, indeed, caused by "bugs an' grubs." "And many people, with imaginations like yours, have felt exactly the same. Did you ever read a poem called 'The Reaper'? No, I suppose not," he added, as the girl shook her curls, while a wistful look crept into her eyes.
"It was written by Longfellow, a very famous poet who used to live near my home city of Boston, and no man ever loved little children better than he did. I had to learn the verses years ago when I was a schoolboy, and I remember the first of them still:—
"'There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.'
"For—he has the Reaper say—the Lord has need of the pretty flowers to make his garden in Heaven more bright and fair."
"I never thought er thet," said the girl seriously, "but I reckon hit's so. Grandpap's bearded like the grain, but somehow he 'pears ter me more like er big pine tree, fer grain bends before ther wind, an' he haint never bent ter no storm."