"Be seated!" cried the Harvester. "Ruth, that's the longest speech I
ever heard you make, and it sounded, praise the Lord, like a girl. Did
Doc say he would fix something for you?"

"Yes, such a lot of things! I am going to shut my eyes and open my mouth
and swallow all of them. I'm going to be born again and forget all I
ever knew before I came here, and soon I will be tagging you everywhere,
begging you to suggest designs for my pencil, and I'll simply force life
to come right for you."

The Harvester smiled.

"Sounds good!" he said. "But, Ruth, I'm a little dubious about force
work. Life won't come right for me unless you learn to love me, and
love is a stubborn, contrary bulldog element of our nature that won't
be driven an inch. It wanders as the wind, and strikes us as it will.
You'll arrive at what I hope for much sooner if you forget it and amuse
yourself and be as happy as you can. Then, perhaps all unknown to you,
a little spark of tenderness for me will light in your breast; and if it
ever does we will buy a fanning mill and put it in operation, and we'll
raise a flame or know why."

"And there won't be any force in that?"

"What you can't compel is the start. It's all right to push any growth
after you have something to work on."

"That reminds me," said the Girl, "there is a question I want to ask
you."

"Go ahead!" said the Harvester, glancing at her as he hewed a joist.

She turned away her face and sat looking across the lake for a long
time.

"Is it a difficult question, Ruth?" inquired the Harvester to help her.

"Yes," said the Girl. "I don't know how to make you see."

"Take any kind of a plunge. I'm not usually dense."

"It is really quite simple after all. It's about a girl----a girl I
knew very well in Chicago. She had a problem----and it worried her
dreadfully, and I just wondered what you would think of it."

The Harvester shifted his position so that he could watch the side of
the averted face.

"You'll have to tell me, before I can tell you," he suggested.

"She was a girl who never had anything from life but work and worry. Of
course, that's the only kind I'd know! One day when the work was most
difficult, and worry cut deepest, and she really thought she was losing
her mind, a man came by and helped her. He lifted her out, and rescued
all that was possible for a man to save to her in honour, and went his
way. There wasn't anything more. Probably there never would be. His
h