"But if I tried, if I tried ..." she pleaded.

"It is not by trying that these things are done," said the Dame coldly, "Lotte will not lift the load of russets yonder though she break her back at it, little fool. See, now she is so tired that Hans must carry both them and her."

"She is a country girl," said the pale woman, eagerly.

"Outside and inside she is made after the pattern of yourself and all other women," said the Dame, "and the one truth is true for us all."

"Good Dame," she said, after a moment, while the wagons creaked through the orchard and the girls laughed as the sun slipped lower, "what if I strove no more for greatness, but only made me little[Pg 80] pictures to pleasure a few that love me and myself?"

[Pg 80]

"Why, as for that," said the Dame more kindly—"have a care there, Roger, you will hurt your sister if you play too roughly with her!—as for that, I can see no harm in it. Neither can I see how it should be worth any woman's while, if the thing be not great, and she knows it. It is a child's game."

"That is true," she said bitterly, "though how you should know it who pass your days on a petty farm, far from the great world, I cannot see."

"If you come to my time of life, my dear, and still think that the world is great or petty by so much as it is near a farm or far from it, you will not be having much content in your old age," said the Dame. "Now I must put my mind upon the heel of this stocking."

She wept aloud and saw now that not for nothing had she come upon this secret Farm and that in this glowing orchard[Pg 81] she was to learn her hardest lesson. The Dame spoke again, and finally.

[Pg 81]

"Listen!" she said, "for this is the way of it. No woman living will ever do a great work who could not have borne great children, and if she can bear great children she can do no other great work. Else she would be as God Almighty, who has made both the poet and the poem, the painter and his picture. For He made it before the painter could see it. Now, go and help them with the apples, for the sun is setting and there are yet a few to gather."

She stumbled forward and threw herself upon the fragrant heaps and toiled till the breath left her, nor did she talk any more to Elspeth, who 

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