Say to yourself, `I'll enter this partnership and if it brings me anything good, I'm that much ahead. If it fails, Ihave lost nothing.' That's the way to look at it."
Then before she could answer he continued: "Now I want all the mullein bloom I can get. You'll see the yellow heads everywhere. Strip the petals and bring them here, and I'll come for them every day. They must go on the trays as fresh as possible. On your part, we will make out the order now."
He took a pencil and notebook from his pocket.
"You want drawing pencils and brushes; how many, what make and size?"
The Girl hesitated for a moment as if struggling to decide what to do; then she named the articles.
"And paper?"
He wrote that down, and asked if there was more.
"I think," he said, "that I can get this order filled in Onabasha. The art stores should keep these things.
And shouldn't you have water-colour paper and some paint?"
Then there was a flash across the white face.
"Oh if I only could!" she cried. "All my life I have been crazy for a box of colour, but I never could afford it, and of course, I can't now. But if this splendid plan works, and I can earn what I owe, then maybe I can."
"Well this `splendid plan' is going to `work,' don't you bother about that," said the Harvester. "It has begun working right now. Don't worry a minute.
After things have gone wrong for a certain length of time, they always veer and go right a while as compensation. Don't think of anything save that you are at the turning. Since it is all settled that we are to be partners, would you name me the figures of the debt that is worrying you? Don't, if you mind. I just thought perhaps we could get along better if I knew.
Is it----say five hundred dollars?"
"Oh dear no!" cried the Girl in a panic. "I never could face that! It is not quite one hundred, and that seems big as a mountain to me."
"Forget it!" he cried. "The ginseng will pay more than half; that I know. I can bring you the cash in a little over a week."
She started to speak, hesitated, and at last turned to him.
"Would you mind," she said, "if I asked you to keep it until I can find a way to go to town? It's too far to walk and I don't know how to send it. Would I dare put it in a letter?"
"Never!" said the Harvester. "You want a draft.
That money will be too precious to run any risks. I'll bring it to you and you can write a note and explain to whom you want it paid, and I'll take it to the bank for you and get your draft. Then you can write a letter, and half your worry will be over safely."
"It must be done in a sure way," said the Girl. "If I knew I had the money to pay that much on what Iowe, and then lost it, I simply could not endure it. Iwould lie down and give up as Aunt Molly has."
"Forget that too!" said the Harvester. "Wipe out all the past that has pain in it. The future is going to be beautifully bright. That little bird on the bush there just told me so, and you are always safe when you trust the feathered folk. If you are going to live in the country any length of time, you must know them, and they will become a great comfort. Are you planning to be here long?"
"I have no plans. After what I saw Chicago do to my mother I would rather finish life in the open than return to the city. It is horrible here, but at least I'm not hungry, and not afraid----all the time."
"Gracious Heaven!" cried the Harvester. "Do you mean to say that you are afraid any part of the time?
Would you kindly tell me of whom, and why?"
"You should know without being told that when a woman born and reared in a city, and all her life confined there, steps into the woods for the first time, she's bound to be afraid. The last few weeks constitute my entire experience with the country, and I'm in mortal fear that snakes will drop from trees and bushes or spring from the ground. Some places I think I'm sinking, and whenever a bush catches my skirts it seems as if something dreadful is reaching up for me; there is a possibility of horror lurking behind every tree and----"
"Stop!" cried the Harvester. "I can't endure it! Do you mean to tell me that you are afraid here and now?"
She met his eyes squarely.
"Yes," she said. "It almost makes me ill to sit on this log without taking a stick and poking all around it first. Every minute I think something is going to strike me in the back or drop on my head."
The Harvester grew very white beneath the tan, and that developed a nice, sickly green complexion for him.
"Am I part of your tortures?" he asked tersely.
"Why shouldn't you be?" she answered. "What do I know of you or your motives or why you are here?"
"I have had no experience with the atmosphere that breeds such an attitude in a girl."
"That is a thing for which to thank Heaven. Undoubtedly it is gracious to you. My life has been different."
"Yet in mortal terror of the woods, and probably equal fear of me, you are here and asking for work that will keep you here."
"I would go through fire and flood for the money Iowe. After that debt is paid----"
