“Yes, and I’ve met the O’Mores who are frequently in Chicago society.  They have friends there.  I think them one ideal couple.”

“That sounds as if they might be the only one,” said Elnora, “and, indeed, they are not.  I know dozens.  Aunt Margaret and Uncle Wesley are another, the Brownlees another, and my mathematics professor and his wife.  The world is full of happy people, but no one ever hears of them.  You must fight and make a scandal to get into the papers.  No one knows about all the happy people.  I am happy myself, and look how perfectly inconspicuous I am.”

“You only need go where you will be seen,” began Philip, when he remembered and finished.  “What do we take to-day?”

“Ourselves,” said Elnora.  “I have a vagabond streak in my blood and it’s in evidence.  I am going to show you where real flowers grow, real birds sing, and if I feel quite right about it, perhaps I shall raise a note or two myself.”

“Oh, do you sing?” asked Philip politely.

“At times,” answered Elnora. “‘As do the birds; because I must,’ but don’t be scared.  The mood does not possess me often.  Perhaps I shan’t raise a note.”

They went down the road to the swamp, climbed the snake fence, followed the path to the old trail and then turned south upon it.  Elnora indicated to Philip the trail with remnants of sagging barbed wire.

“It was ten years ago,” she said.  “I was a little school girl, but I wandered widely even then, and no one cared.  I saw him often.  He had been in a city institution all his life, when he took the job of keeping timber thieves out of this swamp, before many trees had been cut.  It was a strong man’s work, and he was a frail boy, but he grew hardier as he lived out of doors.  This trail we are on is the path his feet first wore, in those days when he was insane with fear and eaten up with loneliness, but he stuck to his work and won out.  I used to come down to the road and creep among the bushes as far as I dared, to watch him pass.  He walked mostly, at times he rode a wheel.

“Some days his face was dreadfully sad, others it was so determined a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant.  That day the Swamp Angel was with him.  I can’t tell you what she was like.  I never saw any one who resembled her.  He stopped close here to show her a bird’s nest.  Then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her.  By the time he left, I had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and I met the big Scotchman Freckles lived with.  He saw me catching moths and butterflies, so he took me to the flower-room and gave me everything there.  I don’t dare come alone often, so I can’t keep it up as he did, but you can see something of how it was.”

Elnora led the way and Philip followed.  The outlines of the room were not distinct, because many of the trees were gone, but Elnora showed how it had been as nearly as she could.