ng it from him for inspection.
"I am going to master you!" he exulted. "Your lines are right. The
design balances and it's graceful. If I have any trouble it will be with
the moth, and I think I can manage. I've got to decide whether to use
cecropia or polyphemus before long. Really, on a walnut, and in
the woods, it should be a luna, according to the eternal fitness of
things----but I'm afraid of the trailers. They turn over and half curl
and I believe I had better not tackle them for a start. I'll use the
easiest to begin on, and if I succeed I'll duplicate the pattern and try
a luna then. The beauties!"
The Harvester selected a knife from the box and began carving the stick
slowly and carefully. His brain was busy, for presently he glanced at
the floor.
"She'd object to that!" he said emphatically. "A man could no more sit
and work where he pleased than he could fly. At least I know mother
never would have it, and she was no nagger, either. What a mother she
was! If one only could stop the lonely feeling that will creep in, and
the aching hunger born with the body, for a mate; if a fellow only
could stop it with a woman like mother! How she revelled in sunshine and
beauty! How she loved earth and air! How she went straight to the marrow
of the finest line in the best book I could bring from the library! How
clean and true she was and how unyielding! I can hear her now, holding
me with her last breath to my promise. If I could marry a girl like
mother----great Caesar! You'd see me buying an automobile to make the
run to the county clerk. Wouldn't that be great! Think of coming in from
a long, difficult day, to find a hot supper, and a girl such as she must
have been, waiting for me! Bel, if I thought there was a woman similar
to her in all the world, and I had even the ghost of a chance to win
her, I'd call you in and forgive you. But I know the girls of to-day. I
pass them on the roads, on the streets, see them in the cafe's, stores,
and at the library. Why even the nurses at the hospital, for all the
gravity of their positions, are a giggling, silly lot; and they never
know that the only time they look and act presentably to me is when they
stop their chatter, put on their uniforms, and go to work. Some of them
are pretty, then. There's a little blue-eyed one, but all she needs is
feathers to make her a 'ha! ha! bird.' Drat that dog!"
The Harvester took the candlestick and the box of knives, opened the
door,
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