Lake, in teacups, in the veins of plants and human blood--the backward
and forward movement of everything, the ebb and flow everywhere--in
short, the Old Man was discussing the very biggest morsel of all
life--vibration. He arose and started up the bank.

"Don't go yet," the little girl called.

"Wait," said he. "I'm coming back. I want to get my pipe."

There was a mist in the morning, and the big stone where she sat was
still cool from the night before. The South Wind which has a sweetness
of its own was just ruffling the Lake; there had been rain, and it was
Summer. The smell of the land was there--the perfume of the Old Mother
herself which is the perfume of the tea-rose--the blend of all that
springs into being.

"Sometimes you catch her as she is," the Old Man said. "Now to-day she
smells like a tea-rose. I don't mean the smell of any particular plant,
but the breath of all--as if old Mother Nature were to pass, and you
winded the beauty of her garments. At night, sometimes she smells like
mignonette--not like mignonette when you hold it close to your face, but
when the wind brings it."

He found this very interesting to himself, because he had not thought
about it just so. He found also that a man is dependent for the quality
of his product upon the nature of his listener, just as much as the seed
is dependent upon the soil. It is true a man can go on producing for
years in the quiet without talking to any one, but he doubles on his
faults, and loses more and more the wide freedom of his passages. Here
was a wrinkled forehead to warn one that the expression wasn't coming
clearly, or when the tension returned. The Other Shore was faintly
glorified in her morning veil.

"We'll go back to the Study and write some of these things we've seen
and talked about," the Old Man said at length. "You see they're not
yours until you express them. And the things _you_ express, as I
expressed them, are not yours either. What you want to express is the
things you get from all this. The value of that is that no one else can
do it."

She went willingly, sat in a corner of the Study.

The Old Man forgot her in a moment.

That was the real beginning.

Presently she came every morning.... I (to return to first person again)
had been led to believe that any outside influence in a man's Study is a
distraction; not alone the necessary noise and movement of the other,
but the counter system of thinking. I perceived little diff