The Golden Woman

He turned slowly from the scene that meant so much to him, and smiled into Joan's astonished eyes.

"An' you're goin' to git busy--readin' that story?" he asked.

The startled girl found herself answering almost before she was aware of it.

"I--I hope to," she said simply.

Then she suddenly realized her own smallness. She felt almost overpowered with the bigness of what the man's words had shown her. It was wonderful to her the thought of this--this "scallawag." The word flashed through her mind, and with it came an even fuller realization of Mrs. Ransford's stupidity. The man's thought was the poet's insight into Nature's wonderlands. He was speaking of that great mountain world as though it were a religion to him, as if it represented some treasured poetic ideal, or some lifelong, priceless friendship.

She saw his answering nod of sympathy, and sighed her relief. Just for one moment she had been afraid. She had been afraid of some sign of pity, even contempt. She felt her own weakness without that. Now she was glad, and went on with more confidence.

"I'm going to start from the very beginning," she said, with something akin to enthusiasm. "I'm going to start here--right here, on my very own farm. Surely the rudiments must lie here--the rudiments that must be mastered before the greater task of reading that story is begun." She turned toward the blue hills, where the summer clouds were wrapped about the glistening snowcaps. "Yes," she cried, clasping her hands enthusiastically, "I want to learn it all--all." Suddenly she turned back and looked at him with a wonderful, smiling simplicity. "Will you help me?" she said eagerly. "Perhaps--in odd moments? Will you help me with those--lessons?"

Buck's breath came quickly, and his simple heart was set thumping in his bosom. But his face was serious, and his eyes quite calm as he nodded.

"It'll be dead easy for you to learn," he said, a new deep note sounding in his voice. "You'll learn anything I know, an' much more, in no time. You can't help but learn. You'll be quicker to understand, quicker to feel all those things. Y' see I've got no sort of cleverness--nor nuthin'. I jest look around an' see things--an' then, then I think I know." He laughed quietly at his own conceit. "Oh, yes! sometimes I guess I know it all. An' then I get sorry for folks that don't, an' I jest wonder how it comes everybody don't understand--same as me. Then something happens."

"Yes, yes."

Joan was so eager she felt she could not wait for the pause that followed. Buck laughed.