“And now, I know, Pardy, you are going to advise me to read Ruskin, because that is the way you always used to wind up our talks.”
“I was, dear.”
“I must try him again. Aunt Anne says we grow up to the stature of certain books as we get older, and at last can look them in the eyes and say, ‘We understand one another.’ As to what you say of Wordsworth, I shall ask her what she thinks.”
“We shall not differ,” said Lyndsay. “I see you have done your sketch. Let us have lunch. Afterward, if there is time, we can take a look at these trees when the evening shadows are falling. We have by no means done with them.”
Meanwhile Tom and his bowman had made the fire. The salmon was deliciously broiled, for these woodmen are nearly all good cooks; the potatoes roasted in the hot ashes; the bacon, broiled with the salmon, in thin slices, brown and crisp. Rose thought there could be no meal like this. It was set out on a flat rock, with birch-bark for plates. The spring was a little way back of them.
“Let us go for the water ourselves,” said Lyndsay.
They walked down the island a hundred yards, and there, in deep woods, found two rocks fallen together, and under them a pretty little rise of water, bubbling up out of the earth.
“That is really a spring,” said Rose. “One uses words until one forgets to think of their meaning. How cold it is!”
“Yes 38°,—and delicious.” He twisted a bit of red birch-bark into a cup, and put a split twig at each end to keep it together. Then he filled it, and she drank, throwing her hair back with one hand, and flashing laughter over the brim of the cup from eyes the color of which has never been rightly settled to this day.
“More lunch, Rose?”