instant that in some mysterious manner their relations with each other
were entirely changed.

"But what _is_ it that you do with yourself?" persisted Helen. "Tell us,
that we may do likewise."

"Will you come and see?" he asked,--his eyes, however, on Mrs.
Laudersdale.

"Will you come in away from the lake to the brooks, and hang among the
alders and angle, dreaming, all day long? Or will you rise at dead of
night and go out on the lake with me and watch field after field of
white lilies flash open as the sun touches them with his spear? Or will
you lie during still noons up among the farmers' fields where myriad
bandrol corn-poppies flaunt over your head, and stain your finger-tips
with the red berries that hang like globes of light in the
palace-gardens of mites and midges, soaking yourself in hot sunshine and
south-winds and heavy aromatic earth-scents?"

"Come!" said Mrs. Laudersdale, rising earnestly, like one in an eager
dream.

"It is plain that you are in training for a poet," said Helen Heath,
laughing, to Mr. Raleigh. "Well, when will you take us? Are the lilies
in bloom? Shall we go to-morrow morning?"

"I don't know that I shall take you at all, Miss Helen;--river-lilies
might suit you best; but these queens of the lakes, the great, calm
pond-lilies, creatures of quiet and white radiance,--I have seen only
one head that possessed enough of the genuine East-Indian repose to be
crowned with them."

"You like repose," said Mrs. Laudersdale. "But what is it?"

"Repose is strength,--life that develops from within, and feels itself
and has no need of effort. Repose is inherent security."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "Article first in a new
dictionary,--encyclopedia, I should say. You worship, but you don't
possess your god, for you look at this moment like a shaft in the bow;
and here comes an archer to give it flight."

"Where are you going, Kate?" said her cousin.

"To pick strawberries in the garden. Want to come?"

The three could do no better than accept her invitation. The good ladies
might stare as they could after Mrs. Laudersdale, and wonder what
sudden sprite had possessed her, since for neither man nor woman of the
numerous party had she hitherto condescended to lift an unwonted eyelid;
what they would have said to have seen her plunged in a strawberry-bed,
gathering handfuls and raining them drop by drop into Helen Heath's
mouth, to silence her while she herself might talk,--her own fi