And the days that followed! Each one a delight—each one happier than the one before. The sun seemed to soak into his blood; the strength of the great hemlocks with their giant uplifted arms seemed to have found its way to his muscles. He grew stronger, more supple. He could follow Hank all day now, tramping the brook or scaling the sides of Bald Face, its cheeks scarred with thunderbolts. And with this joyous life there came a light into his eyes, a tone in his voice, a spring and buoyancy in his step that brought him back to the days when he ran across Kennedy Square and had no care for the day nor thought for the morrow. Before the week was out he had covered half a dozen canvases with pictures of the house as he saw it that first morning, bathed in the sunshine; of the brook; the sweep of the Notch, and two or three individual trees that he had fallen in love with—a ragged birch in particular—a tramp of a birch with its toes out of its shoes and its bark coat in tatters.
Before the second week had arrived he had sought the main stage-road and had begun work on a big hemlock that stood sentinel over a turn in the highway. There was a school-house in the distance and a log-bridge under which the brook plunged. Here he settled himself for serious work.
He was so engrossed that he had not noticed the school-children who had come up noiselessly from behind and were looking in wonder at his drawings. Presently a child, who in her eagerness had touched his shoulder, broke the stillness in apology.
"Say, Mister, there's a lady comes to school every day. She's a painter too, and drawed Sissy Mathers."
Oliver glanced at the speaker and the group about her; wished them all good-morning and squeezed a fresh tube on his palette. He was too much absorbed in his work for prolonged talk. The child, emboldened by his cheery greeting, began again, the others crowding closer. "She drawed the bridge too, and me and Jennie Waters was sitting on the rail—she's awful nice."
Oliver looked up, smiling.
"What's her name?"
"I don't know. Teacher calls her Miss Margaret, but there's more to it.
She comes every year."
Oliver bent over his easel, drew out a line brush from the sheaf in his hand, caught up a bit of yellow ochre from his palette and touched up the shadow of the birch. "All the women painters must be Margarets," he said to himself. Then he fell to wondering what had become of her since the school closed. He had always felt uncomfortable over the night when he had defended "the red-headed girl in blue gingham," as she was called by the students. She had placed him in the wrong by misunderstanding his reasons for serving her. The students had always looked upon him after that as a quarrelsome person, when he was only trying to protect a woman from insult. He could not find it in his heart to blame her, but he wished that it had not happened. As these thoughts filled his mind he became so absorbed that the children's good-by failed to reach his ear.
That day Hank had brought him his luncheon—two ears of hot corn in a tin bucket, four doughnuts and an apple—the corn in the bottom of the bucket and the doughnuts and apple on top. He could have walked home for his midday meal, for he was within sound of Samanthy's dinner-horn, but he liked it better this way.