CHAPTER XV MORE NATURE STUDY.

“IT’S love that makes the world go round,” said I next morning at breakfast.

“What makes the merry-go-round?” said Ethel.

“The answer to that will be found in the May number,” said I. “You ought not to ask conundrums, whose answers have to be thought up. But isn’t it so? Hasn’t Minerva been an angel ever since James came and if she isn’t in love with him what is she?”

“If that’s another conundrum, I give it up, too. Do you suppose that James loves her?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Minerva is not bad looking and she has a happy disposition in the main,” said I, as Ethel passed me my coffee.

“My, yes, she’s a different creature from what she was when she first saw these hills. This morning she actually told me that the sunsets up here had more colors in them than they had in New York, and that they were bigger. She’s beginning to take notice. I must give her a nature lesson. Something has always happened to prevent it.”

“I don’t think the need for it exists now that she has James. He’s all the study she needs.”

“Yes, but if we should come up here next summer, and James should not prove constant, it would be something if she loved the country for its own sake.”

Just then Minerva came in with a dish of brains; a present from Bert’s father, who sent the pleasant message that they always threw the stuff away, but he knew that city folks had queer tastes.

“Minerva, what were you going to do this morning?” asked Ethel.

“Nothin’, ma’am,” said she innocently.

“You mean nothing in particular,” said Ethel, knowing that no impertinence was intended. “Suppose you take some of those new kitchen towels to hem and we’ll go out into the fields and I’ll tell you something about the flowers.”

“I got some sewin’ of my own to do if you’ll let me,” said Minerva.

“Why certainly. You know, Minerva, as long as you get your work done each day, I don’t care what you do for yourself.”

“No’m, I know you don’t. I don’t either ma’am.”

I looked up hastily, but Minerva was guiltless of any attempt at repartee. She was simply acquiescing with her mistress.

Having nothing better to do than loaf, I went with Ethel to a place called the wintergreen lot, about a half mile distant, and Minerva followed after with a lot of white stuff that reminded me strongly of the day I was married. I am not up in feminine fabrics, and the thing might have been mosquito netting.

The day was hot and sultry. Hanging over Egerton in the southwest were great black, wicked looking clouds that portended thunder storms. We had so far escaped without one, although we had several times heard distant thunder and had seen a storm following the course of the river in the west.

“Shall we take umbrellas?” said Ethel.

“What’s the use?” said I. “If it rains we’ll probably get wet anyway, and in such hot weather as this a wetting won’t hurt.”

So we went unhampered by umbrellas, and after a walk through a tree-embowered road, whose beauty we were told had been marked for destruction by the brass mill, but of which destruction the happy trees were all ignorant, we reached the wintergreen lot, and Ethel, spreading a shawl, seated herself on the mossy ground, while I perched on a rock until it got too hard, when I changed to another rock.

“Minerva, do you see that little red berry in the grass?” said Ethel.

“Yas’m.”

“Well, pick it and I’ll tell you something about it.”

I sniffed. Ethel’s love of outdoor life is very real, but she is not a botanist. “She knows what she likes” in nature, but she can’t tell why.

She heard the sniff and her lips came together to form a noiseless word that she bestows upon me when she thinks I need it.

Then she smiled at me and took from a little bag she had brought with her Mrs. Dana’s book, “How to Know the Wild Flowers,” which she had evidently found among the Wheelock’s possessions.

“That, Minerva, is the wintergreen berry. Taste it and tell me what it reminds you of.”

Minerva’s wide mouth enveloped the dainty berry and she crushed it with her tongue. Then she beamed.

“Chewin’ gum,” said she. “Wish I had some.”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of that, but they do flavor chewing gum with it, I believe. But could you get anything in the city as pretty as that?”

“Yas’m.”

“What, Minerva?”

“Cramberries.”

“Yes, but they don’t grow in the city. Now here’s something that I never noticed before. It says in this book that ‘he who seeks the cool shade of the evergreens on a hot July day is likely to discover the nodding wax-like flowers of this little plant.’ Now let’s see if we can find any. It doesn’t seem likely that the fruit and the blossom would be blooming at the same time.”

“They are, though,” said I. “Found that out when I was a boy. I can never taste wintergreen berries without being reminded of a girl that—”

“Wait, Philip, we’ll be back. I want to see if I can get a flower.”

Ethel always cuts me off when I make any references to my lost youth. She calls them my calf love days and takes no interest in them, while I contend that some of the happiest moments in a man’s life are when he roams the fields in retrospect with a girl who is always ten times prettier than anyone he ever met. I once met one of those old-time beauties and the shock was terrific. I tried to restore her features as I gazed at her, but my imagination balked at the task. She was a good woman, the mother of seven good children, but the vision of the lovely, dancing-eyed, pink-cheeked, rosebud-mouthed, shell-like-eared, dimple-chinned naiad of my early youth was gone.

From the way in which she looked at me, I felt that she had suffered a like shock. The tall, lithe-limbed, high-browed, innocent-faced, clear-eyed, light-hearted boy of sixteen no longer stood before her. Thanks be to the conventions of society, neither one of us wished that our tongues could utter the thoughts that arose in us, and we both had the audacity to speak of the jolly days of long ago, and I left her, thinking that I still considered her the little beauty of 1886, while she left me still imagining that I thought she thought me the handsome youth of the same year.

Ethel gave a little cry of delight.

“I’ve found one, Philip. It’s just like the picture in the book.”

“Why, of course,” said I. “You don’t suppose that they make up those pictures and expect the plants to conform to them?”

Not noticing my flippancy, she came over with two of the little flowers and held them up for me to see.

“They look like something very pretty, Minerva. What do they remind you of?”

“A pair of pants,” said Minerva, with a loud laugh.

“Dutchmen’s breeches, do you mean?” said Ethel. “Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, they are like little knickerbockers, but they remind me of Japanese lanterns. Now, Minerva, the woods and the fields are full of plants like these and they all have names and each has a beauty of its own—”

“What’s Dutchmen’s breeches?” interrupted Minerva. She had been to the “Continuous” many times and I think that Dutchmen’s breeches brought to her mind a pair of knockabout comedians.

“Do you think there are any in this field, Philip?” said Ethel.

“You have got me, Ethel. I forget each summer the names of the flowers I learned the summer before. Seems to me Dutchmen’s breeches is an early spring flower.”

“No, I think it comes in the late fall to tell the truth. We’ll look it up.”

She turned to the index, which referred her to the 37th page. Minerva looked over her shoulder in the way she should not have done and no sooner did she see the flower picture than she said,

“Oh, Lawdy, that makes me homesick. I’ve seen that in the park.”

“Oh, surely not,” said Ethel. “Let’s see what it says.”

“Mmmmmm,” she mumbled over the early part of the description and then she came to, ‘The flower when seen explains its two English titles. It is accessible to every New Yorker, for in early April it whitens many of the shaded ledges in the upper part of the Central Park.’ Why, you were right, Minerva. I dare say you know more about such things than I do.”

“Why, Mis. Vernon, I haven’ any grudge aginst country if o’ny city is a few blocks off. My, if I could run down now an’ see my folks I’d bring ’em up here to-morrer. I used to go to the park often my day out, but the city’s all around it an’ up here the country’s so big it—oh, Lawdy, what was that?”

It was a flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder that told us a storm was close at hand.

“Ooh, let’s get under the trees,” said Minerva, her face showing abject terror.

“That would be the last thing to do,” said I.

“Well, let’s do it first, then,” said she, all unconscious of the witticism.

The black clouds had been coming swiftly and now in the southwest we heard the noise of rain. We could see it falling on Egerton and could mark its approach up the hills to where we were standing.

The flashes of lightning grew more blinding and the thunder claps followed more and more quickly. We were in for a wetting, that was sure.

Minerva threw herself on her face in the soft moss and began to pray, “Oh, Lawd,” said she; “Don’t send any messengers to take me, out here in the country. Let me go back to the city befo’—Oh, Lawdy.” This break in the prayer was caused by a flash and a peal that were almost simultaneous, and down in a forest of walnuts below us there was a sound of riven wood.

“Dear, I wish we were home,” said Ethel, drawing a long breath and coming close to me.

“Well, we are probably safer here than at home. It’ll be over soon.”

And now the rain came down in sheets. We were wet to the skin in two minutes. Minerva in a heap on the ground moaned and prayed and ejaculated and Ethel clung to me and shuddered at each awful peal and each blinding flash. My clothes hung in bags about me and leaked at a dozen points.

The display was magnificent, but I did not see the beauty in it that I saw when I was a boy. Then I was not frightened. Now each summer the storms seem to be worse and more awe-inspiring, and to tell the truth, so many of our friends have suffered loss from thunder storms that I would be perfectly willing to forego them in future.

The storm departed suddenly, even as it had come, and when the rumbling grew fainter Minerva rose to her feet.

A call came to us from the road. We looked up and saw James, also soaked to the skin, sitting in Bert’s buggy.

At the sound of his voice Minerva gave a glad cry and started to run to him.

He made a trumpet of his hands and said, “Mrs. Vernon, you and Mr. Vernon drive and Minerva and me’ll walk.”

I considered a minute and then thinking that Ethel ran a greater risk of catching cold if she rode than if she walked, I shook my head and told Minerva to run along.

We took one or two steps in the sloppy moss and our shoes spurted water.

“Let’s go barefoot,” said I. “It will be much more comfortable.”

We took off our shoes and stockings, and for the first time in many years we walked the country barefoot. Perhaps it was Ethel’s first experience of the joy. To judge from her face it was. But we picked out soft places and by the time we reached the house we were already somewhat dried, nor did we get any ill effects.

“Ethel,” said I, “what was that white thing Minerva brought to sew on?”

“A wedding veil,” said Ethel.