Joan worked
too, helping Mary and the maids, but after a wayward manner of her own.
There was no counting upon her and she loved better to be with her uncle,
abroad upon the land, or by herself, hidden in the orchard, in the fruit
garden, or in the secret places of the coomb.
She had her favorite spots, for as yet that great, overwhelming regard for
the old stone crosses, which came to her afterward, had not grown into a
live passion. Her present pilgrimages were short, her shrines those of
Nature's building. Much she loved the arm of an ancient apple-tree hid in
the very heart of the orchard. A great gnarled limb bent abruptly out, grew
long and low, and was propped at a distance of three yards from the parent
tree. Midway between the stem and support, a crooked elbow of the bough
made a pleasant seat for Joan; and here, when life at the farm looked more
gray than common, she came and sometimes sat long hours. Her perch raised
her above a velvet scented sea of wall-flowers which ran in regular waves
beneath the apple-trees, under murmuring of many bees. The blossom above
Joan's head was all a lacework of sunny rose and cream; and the sun painted
glorious russet harmonies below, glinted magically in the green and white
above, turned the gray lichens, which clustered on the weather side of the
trunks and boughs, to silver. The glory of life here always heartened Joan.
She felt the immortality of Nature, who, from naked earth and barren
boughs, thus at the sun's smile splendidly awakened, and teemed and
overflowed with bewildering, inexhaustible luxuriance.
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