LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
“Do? Nothing at all, sir; I shall wander about at my own sweet will,—
‘As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.’
This promises to be one of the best days of my life.”
“You’ll not be quite so gay, my lady, when night swoops down on you in this spook-haunted woodland.”
“Night swoops up, not down, in the hills, Thomas, and there are no spooks in this enchanted wilderness.”
“Good-bye!” Bert called out as they started. “Don’t get desperate and hang yourself in a fir tree while we are away!”
I watched them driving down the leafy lane until a bend in the road was reached, when Mary looked back; then—
“A hand like a whitewood blossom
She lifted, and waved, and passed.”
I can’t help smiling at this conceit, for Mary’s hands and my own, after a year and more of ranch life, are in texture and color hardly like whitewood blossoms, to say the least.
The forsaken house looked very quiet as I turned back to the walk leading to the door. That walk which when we arrived here in the cold drizzle of a winter evening seemed only a narrow muddy gulch fringed with dead bushes, surprised and gladdened us,
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