Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/285

 oneself and with whom one could walk, if required, in comfort and content. Cope threw up his head to the hills and threw out his chest to the winds, and laid quick hands on a short length of weather-beaten hemlock plank. "Afraid I'm not holding up my end," he said to Peter.

At the house again, he found that Carolyn had brought the oil-stove back into service, and, with Helga, had cast the cloth over the table and had set some necessary dishes on it. He fetched a pail or two of water from the pump, and each time placed a fresh young half-grown sassafras leaf on the surface. "The trade-mark of our bottling-works," he said facetiously; "to show that our products are pure." And Carolyn, despite his facetiousness, felt more than ever that he might easily become a poet. Medora viewed the floating leaves with indulgent appreciation. "But don't let's cumber ourselves with many cares," she suggested; "we are here to make the best of the afternoon. Let's out and away,—the sooner the better."

The three soon set forth for a stroll through spring's reviving domain. Cope walked between Medora and Carolyn, or ahead of them, impartially sweeping away twigs and flowering branches from before their faces. The young junipers were putting forth tender new tips; the bright leaves of the sassafras shone forth against the pines. Above the newly-rounded tops of the oaks and maples in the valley below them the Three Witches rose gauntly; and off on their far hill the two companion pines—(how had he named them? Romeo and Juliet? Pelleas and