"Come, Edith;—why, she really seems to like it;—Edith!—she don't hear me; no wonder, in all this noise;—Edith, we are going back to the upper world. You can stay here, if you please, with Mr. Morton."
But Miss Leslie chose to follow her friend; while Morton aided her up the rough path.
"I have observed," he said, as they came to smoother ground, "in our excursions yesterday and to-day, that Mrs. Holyoke has not much of your liking for rocks, trees, and water. I mean, that she has no great taste for nature."
"At all events, she has an eye for what is picturesque in it. She is an artist, you know, and paints in water colors extremely well."
"Yes, and whenever she sees a landscape, she thinks only how it would look on paper or canvas, and judges it accordingly. That is not a genuine love of nature. One does not value a friend for good looks, or dress, or air; and so, in the same way, is not a true fondness for nature independent, to some extent at least, of effects of form, or color, or grouping?"
"It does not imply, I think, any artistic talent, or even a good eye for artistic effect. And yet I cannot conceive of a great landscape artist being without it, any more than a great poet."
"If he were, he would be no better than a refined scene painter. We are in a commercial country; so pardon me if I use commercial language. This liking for nature is a capital investment. She is always a kind mistress, a good friend, always ready with a tranquillizing word, never inconstant, never out of humor, never sad."
"And yet sometimes she can speak sadly, too."
Edith Leslie said no more; but there came before her the remembrance of her long watchings in the room of the dying Mrs. Leslie, when, seated by the window, open in the hot summer nights, she had listened, hour after hour, mournfully, drearily, almost with superstitious awe, to the chirping of the crickets, the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill, and now and then the hooting of a distant owl.
"Here in America," continued Morton, "we ought to make the most of this feeling for nature; for we have very little else."