"
"Oh, he was only a spirit."
"Yes, but so is everything that is anything. Take the spirit away and
we'd all be cattle. And I know exactly what species of cattle I'd
be--I'd be a calf--just a red calf with horns about an inch long, and in
nosing around I'd get a basket on my head, be frightened and make myself
ridiculous. I never knew it before, but I know now that I'd be a calf."
"Oh, no you wouldn't, no such of a thing. What makes you talk about
yourself that way? Come on, now."
Over a bluff of rock fifty feet high the rivulet poured and in the spray
they saw a rainbow. Down below where they stood ferns were rank and the
rocks were soft with moss. Here they sat and chatted of nothing but
themselves, he discovering faults in himself and she denying them,
calling him prettily to task for his slander, and thrilled him from one
indecision to another. The sun, emblazoning for a moment a distant
mountain top, purpled the lower world and then all was in shade. For a
long time they had been silent and when she spoke he started out of his
revery and rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep; but he had not, for
as a spirit, a little boy Bud, he had played with her in the gulch,
coming out from beneath the rock when she called him.
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