“You are,” agreed Burgeman senior in a colorless voice. “But I hardly think any one will put you off the grounds—at least until you have caught your breath.”
“Thank you. Maybe the grounds are yours, now?” she questioned again.
The sick man signified they were by a slight nod.
“Well, ’tis the prettiest place hereabouts.” Patsy offered the information as if she had made the discovery herself and was generously sharing it with him. “I’m a stranger; and when I saw yon bit of cool, gray water, and the pines clustering round, and the wee green faery isle in the midst—with the bridge holding onto it to keep it from disappearing entirely—and the sand so white, and the lawns so green—why, it looked like a Japanese garden set in a great sedge bowl. Do you wonder I had to come closer and see it better?”
Burgeman said nothing; but the ghost of a feeling showed, the greed of possession.
“And it all belongs to you. You bought it all—the lake and the woods and the lawns.” It was not a question, but a statement.
“I own three miles in every direction.”
“Except that one.” Patsy smiled as she pointed a finger upward. “Did you ever think how generous the blessed Lord is to lend a bit of His sky to put over the land men buy and fence in and call ‘private property’? It’s odd how a body can think he owns something because he has paid money for it; and yet the things that make it worth the owning he hasn’t paid for at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you think much of this place if you couldn’t be looking yonder and watching the clouds scud by, all turning to pink and flame color and purple as the sun gathers them in? What would you do if no wild flowers grew for you, or the birds forgot you in the spring and built their nests and sang for your neighbor instead? And can you hire the sun to shine by the day, or order the rain by the hogshead?”