straight in her daughter’s eyes, smiling her quiet little smile.
“What? What was it, Mama?” Helen demanded eagerly.
“Did you ever take a good look at that maple tree out front that stands on your right as you come in the house?”
“Why, no,” Helen said in a bewildered tone. “How do you mean?”
“Well,” said Eliza calmly, yet with a certain triumph in her voice, “you just take a good look at it tomorrow. That’s all.”
“But why—I can’t see—how do you mean, Mama?”
“Now, child—” Eliza pursued her subject deliberately, with a ruminant relish of her strong pursed lips—“I was born and brought up in the country—close to the lap of Mother Earth, as the sayin’goes—and when it comes to trees—why, I reckon there’s mightly little about’em that I don’t know…. Now here,” she said abruptly, coming to the centre of her argument—“did you ever see a tree that had a big hollow gash down one side—that looked like it had all been eaten an’rotted out by some disease that had been destroyin’it?”
“Why, yes,” Helen said, in a puzzled voice. “But I don’t see yet—”
“Well, child, I’ll tell you, then,” said Eliza, both voice and worn brown eyes united in their portents of a grave and quiet earnestness—“that tree doesn’t always die! You’ll see trees that have had that happen to them—and they cure themselves! You can see where some old rotten growth has eaten into them—and then you can see where the tree has got the best of it—and grown up again—as sound and healthy as it ever was—around that old rotten growth. And that,” she said triumphantly, “that is just exactly what has happened to that maple in the yard. Oh, you can see it!” she cried positively, at the same time making an easy descriptive gesture with her wide hand—“you can see where it has lapped right around that old growth—made a sort of fold, you know—and here it is just as sound and healthy as it ever was!”
“Then you mean?—”
“I mean,” said Eliza in her straight and deadly fashion—“I mean that if a tree can do it, a man can do it—and I mean that if any man alive could do it your daddy is that man—for he’s had as much strength and vitality as any man I ever saw—and more than a tree!” she cried. “Lord! I’ve seen him do enough to kill a hundred trees—the things he’s done and managed to get over would kill the strongest tree that ever lived!”
“Oh, but Mama, surely not!” said Helen, laughing, and beginning to pluck at her chin in an abstracted manner, amused and tickled in spite of herself
