gging to be picked. It gets picked.

Yet sometimes its very beauty has stayed my hand. I shall never forget one
clump I found, growing out of a bank of deep green moss, partly shaded by
a great hemlock. The soft pink blossoms--luxuriant leafy sprays of
them--were lying out on the moss in a pagan carelessness of beauty, as
though some god had willed it there for his pleasure. I sat beside it a
long time, and in the end I left it without picking it.

On this particular day, Jonathan being still lost in the brush patch, I
had risen from my visit with the first-discovered blossoms and wandered
on, from clump to clump, wherever the glimpse of a leaf attracted me,
picking the choicest here and there and dropping them into my box. After I
do not know how long, I was roused by Jonathan's whistle. I was some
distance up the hillside by this time, and he was beside the brook, at the
bend.

"What luck?" he called.

"Good luck! I've found lots. Come up!"

He took a few steps up toward me, so that conversation could drop from
shouting to speaking levels. "How many did you get?" he asked.

"How many?{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Oh {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} why {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Oh, I got one up there where you showed me--under
the rock, you know."

"Good one?"

"Eight inches. He's down there by the bars."

"Good! And what about the bend?"

"The bend? Oh, I didn't fish there--look at these! Aren't they beauties?" I
came down the hill to hold my open box up to his face. But my casual word
almost effaced the scent of the flowers.

"Ah--yes--delicious--didn't fish there? Why not? Did they see you?"

"Who? The trout? I don't know. But I saw this. And I just had to pick it."

"Well! You're a great fisherman! And with that water right there beside
you! Lord!"

"With the arbutus right here beside me! Lord!"

"But the arbutus would wait."

"But the trout would wait. They're waiting for you now, don't you hear
them? Go and fish there!"

"No. That's your pool." Jonathan has a way of bestowing a trout-pool on me
as if it were a bouquet. To refuse its opportunities is almost like
throwing his flowers back in his face.

"Well--of course it's a beautiful pool--"

"Best on the brook," murmured Jonathan.

"But, truly, I'd enjoy it just as much to have you fish it."

"Nobody can fish it now for a while. I thought you'd be there, of course,
and I came stamping along down, close by the bank. They wouldn't bite
now--not for half