And so she stood, drinking in at her eyes all the shifting and melting splendors of the marvelous scene, with her thought busy, once more, in its own questioning.  She remembered what she had said to Cousin Delight:  “It is all outside.  Going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having.  In myself, am I good for any more, after all?  Or only—­a green fig-tree in the sunshine?”

Why, with that word, did it all flash together for her, as a connected thing?  Her talk that morning, many weeks ago, that had seemed to ramble so from one irrelevant matter to another,—­from the parable to her fancy-traveling, the scenes and pleasures she had made for herself, wondering if the real would ever come; to the linen-drawer, representing her little feminine absorptions and interests; and back to the fig-tree again, ending with that word,—­“the real living is the urging toward the fruit”?  Her day’s journey, and the hints of life—­narrowed, suffering, working—­that had come to her, each with its problem?  Marmaduke Wharne’s indignant protest against people who “did not know their daily bread,” and his insistence upon the two things for human creatures to do:  the receiving and the giving; the taking from God, in the sunshine, to grow; the ripening into generous uses for others,—­was it all one, and did it define the whole, and was it identical, in the broadest and highest, with that sublime double command whereon “hang the law and the prophets”?

Something like this passed into her mind and soul, brightening there, like the morning.  It seemed, in that glimpse, so clear and gracious,—­the truth that had been puzzling her.

Easy, beautiful summer work:  only to be shone upon; to lift up one’s branching life, and be—­reverently—­glad; to grow sweet and helpful and good-giving, in one’s turn,—­could she not begin to do that?  Perhaps—­by ever so little; the fruit might be but a berry, yet it might be fair and full, after its kind; and at least some little bird might be the better for it.  All around her, too, the life of the world that had so troubled her,—­who could tell, in the tangle of green, where the good and the gift might ripen and fall?  Every little fern-frond has its seed.

Jeannie came behind her again, and called her back to the contradictory phase of self that, with us all, is almost ready, like Peter, to deny the true.  “What are you deep in now, Les?”

“Nothing.  Only—­we go down from here, don’t we, Jeannie?”

“Yes.  And a very good thing for you, too.  You’ve been in the clouds long enough.  I shall be glad to get you to the common level again.”

“You’ve no need to be anxious.  I can come down as fast as anybody. That isn’t the hard thing to do.  Let’s go in, and get salt-fish and cream for our breakfast.”

The Haddens were new to mountain travel; the Thoresbys, literally, were “old stagers;” they were up in the stable-yard before Mrs. Linceford’s party came out from the breakfast-room.  Dakie Thayne was there, too; but that was quite natural for a boy.