"How sad, Douglas!" cried Leslie. "Your voice is bitter. Can't he do something?"
"Not a blooming thing!" answered Douglas. "She has the money. She is their mother. Her character is unimpeachable. If Minturn went to extremes, the law would give them to her; she would turn them over to ignorant servants who would corrupt them, and be well paid for doing it. Why Minturn told me—but I can't repeat that. Anyway, he made me eager to try my ideas on a lad who would be company for me, when I can't be here and don't wish to be with other men."
"Are you still going to those Brotherhood meetings?"
"I am. And I always shall be. Nothing in life gives me such big returns for the time invested. There is a world of talk breaking loose about the present 'unrest' among women; I happen to know that the 'unrest' is as deep with men. For each woman I personally know, bitten by 'unrest,' I know two men in the same condition. As long as men and women are forced to combine, to uphold society, it is my idea that it would be a good thing if there were to be a Sisterhood organized; then the two societies frankly brought together and allowed to clear up the differences between them."
"But why not?" asked the girl eagerly.
"Because we are pursuing false ideals, we have a wrong conception of what is worth while in life," answered the Scotsman. "Because the sexes except in rare, very rare, instances, do not understand each other, and every day are drifting farther apart, while most of the married folk I know are farthest apart of all. Leslie, what is it in marriage that constrains people? We can talk, argue and agree or disagree on anything, why can't the Minturns?"
"From what you say, it would seem to me it's her idea of what is worth while in life," said Leslie.
"Exactly!" cried Douglas. "But he can sway men! He can do powerful work. He could induce her to marry him. Why can't he control his own blood?"
"If she should lose her money and become dependent upon him for support, he could!" said Leslie.
"He should do it anyway," insisted Douglas.
"Do you think you could?" she queried.
"I never thought myself in his place," said Douglas, "but I believe I will, and if I see glimmerings, I'll suggest them to him."
"Good boy!" said the girl lightly. And then she added: "Do you mind if I think myself in her place and see if I can suggest a possible point at which she could be reached? I know her. I shouldn't consider her happy. At least not with what I call joy."
"What do you call joy?" asked Douglas.
"Being satisfied with your environment."
Douglas glanced at her, then at her surroundings, and looking into her eyes laughed quizzically.
"But if it were different, I am perfectly confident that I should work out joy from life," insisted Leslie. "It owes me joy! I'll have it, if I fight for it!"
"Leslie! Leslie! Be careful! You are challenging Providence. Stronger men than I have wrought chaos for their children," said a warning voice, as her father came behind her chair.
"Chaos or no, still I'd put up my fight for joy, Daddy," laughed the girl. "Only see, Preciousest!"
"One minute!" said her father, shaking hands with Douglas. "Now what is it, Leslie? Oh, I do see!"
"Take my chair and make friends," said the girl.
Mr. Winton seated himself, then began examining and turning the basket. "Indians?" he queried.
"Yes," said Douglas. "A particularly greasy squaw. I wish I might truthfully report an artist's Indian of the Minnehaha type, but alack, it was the same one I've seen ever since I've been in the city, and that you've seen for years before my arrival."
Mr. Winton still turned the basket.
"I've bought their stuff for years, because neither Leslie nor her mother ever would tolerate fat carnations and overgrown roses so long as I could find a scrap of arbutus, a violet or a wake-robin from the woods. We've often motored up and penetrated the swamp I fancy these came from, for some distance, but later in the season; it's so very boggy now. Aren't these rather wonderful?" He turned to his daughter.
"Perfectly, Daddy," she said. "Perfectly!"
"But I don't mean for the Creator," explained Mr. Winton. "I am accustomed to His miracles. Every day I see a number of them. I mean for the squaw."
"I'd have to know the squaw and understand her viewpoint," said Leslie.
"She had it in her tightly clenched fist," laughed Douglas. "One, I'm sure; anyway, not over two."
"That hasn't a thing to do with the art with which she made the basket and filled it with just three perfect plants," said Leslie.
"You think there is real art in her anatomy?" queried Mr. Winton.
"Bear witness, O you treasures of gold!" cried Leslie, waving toward the basket.
"There was another," explained Douglas as he again described the osier basket.
Mr. Winton nodded. He looked at his daughter.
"I like to think, young woman, that you were born with and I have cultivated what might be called artistic taste in you," he said. "Granted the freedom of the tamarack swamp, could you have done better?"
"Not so well, Daddy! Not nearly so well. I never could have defaced what you can see was a noble big tree by cutting that piece of bark, while I might have worshipped until dragged away, but so far as art and I are concerned, the slippers would still be under their tamarack."
"You are begging the question, Leslie," laughed her father. "I was not discussing the preservation of the wild, I was inquiring into the state of your artistic ability. If you had no hesitation about taking the flowers, could you have gone to that swamp, collected the material and fashioned and filled a more beautiful basket that this?"
"How can I tell, Daddy?" asked the girl. "There's only one way to learn. I'll forget my scruples, you get me a pair of rubber boots, then we'll drive to the tamarack swamp and experiment."
"We'll do it!" cried Mr. Winton. "The very first half day I can spare, we'll do it. And you Douglas, you will want to come with us, of course."
"Why, 'of course,'" laughed Leslie.
"Because he started the expedition with his golden slippers. When it come to putting my girl, and incidentally my whole family, in competition with an Indian squaw on a question of art, naturally, her father and one of her best friends would want to be present."
"But maybe 'Minnie' went alone, and what chance would her work have with you two for judges?" asked Leslie.
"We needn't be the judges," said Douglas Bruce quietly.
"We can put this basket in the basement in a cool, damp place, where it will keep perfectly for a week. When you make your basket we can find the squaw and bring her down with us. Lowry could display the results side by side. He could call up whomever you consider the most artistic man and woman in the city and get their decision. You'd be willing to abide by that, wouldn't you?"
"Surely, but it wouldn't be fair to the squaw," explained Leslie. "I'd have had the benefit of her art to begin on."
"It would," said Mr. Winton. "Does not every artist living, painter, sculptor, writer, what you will, have the benefit of all art that has gone before?"
"You agree?" Leslie turned to Douglas.
"Your father's argument is a truism."
"But I will know that I am on trial. She didn't. Is it fair to her?" persisted Leslie.
"For begging the question, commend me to a woman," said Mr. Winton. "The point we began at, was not what you could do in a contest with her. She went to the swamp and brought from it some flower baskets.