Part 42 (2/2)
”If you admire a marsh,” says she, ”there's a world o' mud and rushes to admire out yonder.”
”Or if you admire a cabinful o' lonely ladies,” added Lady Johnson, ”you may gaze your fill upon us.”
”I should never be done or have my fill of beauty if I sat here a thousand years, Polly,” said I.
”A thousand years and a dead fish outs.h.i.+nes our beauty,” smiled Lady Johnson. ”If you truly admire our beauty, Jack, best prove it now.”
”To which of us the Golden Apple?” inquired Claudia, offering one of the winter russets which had been picked at the Point.
”Ho!” said I, ”you think to perplex and frighten me? _Non, pas!_ Polly Johnson shall not have it, because, if she ever makes me wise, wisdom is its own reward and needs no other. And you shall not have it, Claudia!”
”Why not?”
”Mere beauty cannot claim it.”
”Why not? Venus received the apple cast by Eris.”
”But only because Venus promised Love! Do you promise me the reward of the shepherd?”
”Myself?” she asked impudently.
”Venus,” said Lady Johnson, ”made that personal exception, and so must you, Claudia. The G.o.ddess promised beauty; but not herself.”
”Then,” said I, ”Claudia has nothing to offer me. And so I give the apple to Penelope!”
She refused it, shyly.
”Industry is the winner,” said I. ”Thrift triumphs. I already have her gift. I have a dozen pair of woolen stockings for my men, knitted by this fair Penelope of today. And, as she awaits no wandering lord, though many suitors press her, then she should have at least this golden apple of Eris to reward her. And so she shall.”
And I offered it again.
”Take it, my dear,” said Claudia, laughing, ”for this young man has given you a reason. Pallas offered military glory; you offer military stockings! What chance have Hera and poor Aphrodite in such a contest?”
We all were laughing while the cloth was cleared, and Flora brought us a great dish of wild strawberries.
These we sopped in our wine and tasted at our ease, there by the open windows, where a soft wind blew the curtains and the far-spreading azure waters sparkled in the sun.
How far away seemed death!
I looked out upon the mountains, now a pale cobalt tint, and their peaks all denting the sky like blue waves on Lake Erie against the horizon.
Low over the Vlaie Water flapped a giant heron, which alighted not far away and stood like a sentry, motionless at his post.
A fresh, wild breath of blossoms grew upon the breeze--the enchanting scent of pinxters. From the mainland, high on a sugar-maple's spire, came the sweet calling of a meadow-lark.
Truly, war seemed far away; and death farther still in this dear Northland of ours. And I fell a-thinking there that if kings could only see this land on such a day, and smell the pinxters, and hear the sweetened whistle of our lark, there would be no war here, no slavery, no strife where liberty and freedom were the very essence of the land and sky.
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