“That reminds me,” said the Girl, “there is a question I want to ask you.”
“Go ahead!” said the Harvester, glancing at her as he hewed a joist.
She turned away her face and sat looking across the lake for a long time.
“Is it a difficult question, Ruth?” inquired the Harvester to help her.
“Yes,” said the Girl. “I don't know how to make you see.”
“Take any kind of a plunge. I'm not usually dense.”
“It is really quite simple after all. It's about a girl——a girl I knew very well in Chicago. She had a problem——and it worried her dreadfully, and I just wondered what you would think of it.”
The Harvester shifted his position so that he could watch the side of the averted face.
“You'll have to tell me, before I can tell you,” he suggested.
“She was a girl who never had anything from life but work and worry. Of course, that's the only kind I'd know! One day when the work was most difficult, and worry cut deepest, and she really thought she was losing her mind, a man came by and helped her. He lifted her out, and rescued all that was possible for a man to save to her in honour, and went his way. There wasn't anything more. Probably there never would be. His heart was great, and he stooped and pitied her gently and passed on. After a time another man came by, a good and noble man, and he offered her love so wonderful she hadn't brains to comprehend how or why it was.”