She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had come down to find him spading by the moonbeams.
In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the throat and wrists.
"It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I hear the light rustle along the leaves."
"You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she returned, "then you might have raised tobacco."
"That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop—but it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better."
"Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?"
"Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this wonderful tomato to-night at supper?"
She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the bottom of the basket upon her arm.
"You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly fine one."
"I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should demand the eating of it also?"