"I had forgotten that," said the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and the most intimate."
"Do they call the earth her in English?" asked Maria Dolores. "I thought they said it."
"I'm afraid, for the greater part, they do," answered John. "But it's barbarous of them, it's unfilial. Our brown old mother,—fancy begrudging her the credit of her sex! Our brown and green old mother; our kindly, bounteous mother; our radiant, our queenly mother, old, and yet perennially, radiantly young. Look at her now," he cried, circling the garden with his arm, and pointing to the farther landscape, "look at her, shining in her robes of pearl and gold, shining and smiling,—one would say a bride arrayed for the altar. Such is her infinite variety. Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could build temples to her."
"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of her eyes.
"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful purpose. He establishes the raison d'être of man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head."
Maria Dolores leaned back, softly laughing.
"Your infatuation for the earth is so great," she said, "mightn't your lady-love, if she suspected it, be jealous?"
"No," said John, "it is the earth that might be jealous, for, until I saw my lady-love, she was the undivided mistress of my heart. For the rest, my lady-love enjoys, upon this point, my entire confidence. I have kept nothing from her."
"That is well," approved Maria Dolores. "And the sky and the sea," still softly laughing, she asked, "have they no place in your affections?
"The sky is her tiring-maiden, and I love the sky for that," said John. "'Tis the sky that clothes her in her many-coloured raiment, and holds the light whereby her beauty is made manifest. And the sea is a jewel that she bears upon her bosom,—a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least one attribute of humanity."