"Boys would call him so," she answered, shivering slightly.

It was so like him, she thought, to fulfil Bob's request in his hearty,
friendly way; she supposed he wanted her to understand that he wrote to her
only as Bob's amanuensis, --it was plain enough. And yet, and yet, she
thought passionately, it would have been no more than common etiquette to
send a friendly word from himself to her mother. Still the note was not
thrown away. Girls are so irrational; if they cannot have the hand-shake,
they will content themselves with a sight of the glove.

And Ruth in the warm, throbbing, summer days was happy. She was not always
active; there were long afternoons when mere existence was intensely
beautiful. To lie at full length upon the soft turf in the depths of the
small enchanted woods, and hear and feel the countless spells of Nature,
was unspeakable rapture.

"Ah, Floy," she cried one afternoon, as she lay with her face turned up to
the great green boughs that seemed pencilled against the azure sky, "if one
could paint what one feels! Look at these silent, living trees that stand
in all their grandeur under some mighty spell; see how the wonderful heaven
steals through the leaves and throws its blue softness upon the twilight
gloom; here at our feet nestle the soft, green ferns, and over all is the
indescribable fragrance of the redwoods. Turn there, to your right, little
artist, high up on that mountain; can you see through the shimmering haze a
great team moving as if through the air? It is like the vision of the
Bethshemites in Dore's mystic work, when in the valley they lifted up their
eyes and beheld the ark returning. Oh, Floy, it is not Nature; it is God.
And who can paint God?"