“You never had seen me a week ago.”
“Oh hadn't I?” said the Harvester. “Well maybe I dreamed about you then. I am a great dreamer. Once I had a dream that may interest you some day, after you've overcome your fear of me. Now this bed of which I was speaking is a picture in September. You must arrange to drive home with me and see it then.”
“For what do you sell foxglove and mullein?”
“Foxglove for heart trouble, and mullein for catarrh. I get ten cents a pound for foxglove leaves and five for mullein and from seventy-five to a dollar for flowers of the latter, depending on how well I preserve the colour in drying them. They must be sealed in bottles and handled with extreme care.”
“Then if I wasn't too childish to be out picking them, I could be earning seventy-five cents a pound for mullein blooms?”
“Yes,” said the Harvester, “but until you learned the trick of stripping them rapidly you scarcely could gather what would weigh two pounds a day, when dried. Not to mention the fact that you would have to stand and work mostly in hot sunshine, because mullein likes open roads and fields and sunny hills. Now you can sit securely in the shade, and in two hours you can make me a pattern of that moth, for which I would pay a designer of the arts and crafts shop five dollars, so of course you shall have the same.”
“Oh no!” she cried in swift panic. “You were charged too much! It isn't worth a dollar, even!”
“On the contrary the candlestick on which I shall use it will be invaluable when I finish it, and five is very little for the cream of my design. I paid just right. You can earn the same for all you can do. If you can embroider linen, they pay good prices for that, too and wood carving, metal work, or leather things. May I see how you are coming on?”
“Please do,” she said.
The Harvester sprang up and looked over the Girl's shoulder. He could not suppress an exclamation of delight.