"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?"