“Oh I know mullein,” she cried, with almost a hint of animation in her voice. “The tall, yellow flower stem rising from a circle of green felt leaves!”
“Good!” said the Harvester. “What a pretty way to describe it! Do you know any more plants?”
“Only a few! I had a high-school course in botany, but it was all about flower and leaf formation, nothing at all of what anything was good for. I also learned a few, drawing them for leather and embroidery designs.”
“Look here!” cried the Harvester. “I came with an arm load of herbs and expected to tell you all about foxglove, mullein, yarrow, jimson, purple thorn apple, blessed thistle, hemlock, hoarhound, lobelia, and everything in season now; but if you already have a profession, why do you attempt a new one? Why don't you go on drawing? I never saw anything so stupid as most of the designs from nature for book covers and decorations, leather work and pottery. They are the same old subjects worked over and over. If you can draw enough to make original copies, I can furnish you with flowers, vines, birds, and insects, new, unused, and of exquisite beauty, for every month in the year. I've looked into the matter a little, because I am rather handy with a knife, and I carve candlesticks from suitable pieces of wood. I always have trouble getting my designs copied; securing something new and unusual, never! If you can draw just well enough to reproduce what you see, gathering drugs is too slow and tiresome. What you want to do is to reproduce the subjects I will bring, and I'll buy what I want in my work, and sell the remainder at the arts and crafts stores for you. Or I can find out what they pay for such designs at potteries and ceramic factories. You have no time to spend on herbs, when you are in the woods, if you can draw.”
“I am surely in the woods,” said the Girl, “and I know I can copy correctly. I often made designs for embroidery and leather for the shop mother and I worked for in Chicago.”
“Won't they buy them of you now?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Do they pay anything worth while?”
“I don't know how their prices compare with others. One place was all I worked for. I think they pay what is fair.”
“We will find out,” said the Harvester promptly.