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Someone stirred as the door opened, and out of the fetid dusk of the unventilated, closely-shuttered cabin came a voice: "Night shift on?" "No." "Then, damn you! shut the door." As the never-resting sun "forced" the Dawson market-garden and the wild-roses of the trail, so here on the creek men must follow the strenuous example. No pause in the growing or the toiling of this Northern world.
She seems to have grown more flower-like with the years, and while her lovely indestructible profile has gathered distinction, and a lifelong habit of thinking beautiful thoughts, and contemplating beautiful things, has drawn honeyed lines as in silver point about her eyes and mouth, the wild-roses of her cheeks still go on blooming like wild-roses in moonlight.
A low stone wall, with wild-roses nodding over it, ran along the roadside for some way, and midway in it was a trim, yellow-painted gate, which stood invitingly open, showing a neat drive-way, shaded on either side by graceful drooping elms. Old Nancy pricked up her ears and quickened her pace into a very respectable trot, as if she already smelt her oats.
And from this dreamy land, close as it lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult of the breakers and the foam of ever-turning tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the Great South Bay and a long range of dunes, crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes, and wild-roses. In such a country you could not expect a little brook to be noisy, fussy, energetic.
In summer there is a remarkable abundance of ragged-robins by the wayside, with honeysuckles and wild-roses clustering above them in glorious profusion; here and there rises the stately spire of a foxglove. Ferns of exquisite grace and loveliness dispute the right of existence with brambles and grasses and moss; and golden grain comes close to the churchyard wall.
The snow was over the heads of those dried weeds which did not blow away in the autumn, but stayed on their stalks with that persistency of life that outlives death; but all the sturdy bushes, which were almost trees, the swamp-pinks and the wild-roses, waxed gigantic, lost their own outlines, and stretched out farther under their loads of snow.
By the time that the sun has attained height enough in the heavens to make his power tyrannically felt, our baskets are filled. Tou Tou has to throw away her wild-roses, limp and flaccid, into the dust of the lane. We walk home, singing, and making poor jokes, as is our wont.
"But there are no wild-roses now;" and a soft sigh escapes her, as she turns to him, and their eyes meet. "Are there none?" he asks, his eyes drinking in the sudden radiance. For if ever dainty, delicate, ethereal wild-roses bloomed, they are in her cheeks; and oh, what are her scarlet lips that have meant to answer, and are mysteriously tranfixed with the rarest sweetness!
I could not get myself free from "fishing and wishing." At that moment I heard the unusual sound of wheels, and I looked past the high-growing thicket of wild-roses and straggling sumach to see the white nose and meagre shape of the Caplin horse; then I saw William sitting in the open wagon, with a small expectant smile upon his face. "I 've got two lines," he said.
She went on, regardless of direction. At last she found an old pasture where heavy farm-horses looked round at her over their polished flanks and a sad-eyed foal rose to greet her. There she found button mushrooms to her heart's content. Ancient hedges hung above the field and spoke to her in fragrant voices. The glory of the may was just giving place to the shell-tint of wild-roses.
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