He noticed from the start an affected been making game of him, and pitied elegance about her language. So he thrust the whip into her hands and murmured something about his dinner hour. "Folks 'll be lookin' for me. Here's your whip." Rue meekly received the sleek ivory wand, and watched the boy as, his hands in his pockets, he strode down the creek. "You're not going to forget your fish, are you?" she called after him, in a voice choking with emotion. He looked back and noted her unsmiling eyes and the trembling lip. her for her queer fancies. He whistled so that she should not know his soft feelings. "Aren't you Lillo?" she asked, a sob in her voice, but made bold because of his whistle. She knew she had committed some grievous fault, and that the whistle meant condoning. "Maybe I am and maybe I'm not," he said, diplomatically, resolved to be drawn into no more tangles. Rue considered it best to pursue the unfortunate subject no longer. There might be reasons of state involved in He was convinced that she had not Lillo's concealment of his identity. She "By jingo! I clean forgot them." could imagine them. There had been occasions when she herself had found it inconvenient to be known as Dr. Penrith's kin. The two conversed on various topics for a while, exchanging experiences on the finding of birds' nests and squirrels' hoards, on the disgustingness of fractions and long division, on the pleasures of the field and the tedium of company dinners, on all which topics they found themselves at one. "Say! seems 's if I'd known you long time," exclaimed the boy. "Ain't it funny?" "I knew you were Lillo right away," Rue was encouraged to respond. "But I should think she'd be awful lonely without you." "Who the dickens-" "The-the-girl-" Rue had it on the tip of her tongue to finish with that fatal phrase, "the girl with the fagots," but happily desisted. "We ain't got any girl, if that's what you mean," answered the boy. "Me and mother just cooks it up anyhow, when she doesn't forget or go skallyragging off somewheres with Him." The boy scowled at the mention of Him, and his tone grew sinister. "You don't like Him, do you?" asked Rue, sympathetically. "Not one little bit, you bet!" Rue instantly appropriated this choice bit of phraseology for future use. "How does He look?" "Just now He's black, with eyes that stick out, and he's clawy all over." Rue's previous notions were quite upset by this word-picture: "Oh, it's a beetle, you mean, a kind of June-bug. Is your mother a-" Rue hesitated at the long word, which she felt sure, from past experiences when she frightened other children by her strange vocabulary, would stamp her as pariah-" Is your mother a― entomologer? They're people that collect crawlers and fliers and arrange them on pins to frighten silly ladies." She added this interpretation with modesty, so as to disguise the shameful burden of her learning. The boy spread himself full length on the grass and laughed. He rolled over, his face to the ground, and laughed more. He flung his heels skyward and laughed a third trans port. When he resumed a normal posture, Rue stood with her back to him, her face buried in her apron, crying. "I wasn't laughing at nothing," said the boy, crossly, in an excess of contrition. "I often do that, in pleasant weather particularly." Rue peeked at him around the corner of her apron: "Oh! I thought maybe you were laughing—at me." "At you!" His voice was loud with hypocrisy. "About the entomologer and the bugs." The boy's penitential sobriety suffered a moment's collapse. "You see," he smiled, "it's a man I was talking of, but he is uncommonly like a beetle. Good glory!" This time Rue laughed with him. "Not on your life! I never saw my father. Mother's a singer, you know. I don't see her often, either." "Oh, is your mother a singer? She must be awful good,-most as good as a minister." The boy's dazzling teeth showed again. "I don't know much about ministers. Neither does mother." "What? Doesn't she sing in church on Sundays?" The concept "singer in Rue's mind was a lady with staring daisies in her hat, who opened her mouth very wide for the hymns and stood on the organ's right. "No," said the boy, a hint of real manliness in his grave regard. "My mother doesn't sing in church on Sundays. She used to, but longer ago than I can remember. What does she do? She does the circuits, and sometimes she gets on in musical companies for the road." He was quite aware that Rue would not understand him. "But she's very good to me. She lets me live where I please.” "Where you please! Anywhere in the whole wide world!" An amazing jumble of bewitching geographical names filled Rue's imagination. "There's far Cathay, and Lapland, where they have the lovely nights, and India's coral strand, and a green isle in the sea, love," she crooned. "I don't know about them places," said boy dabbled his feet in the water, burthe boy. A hundred fragments from her poets came to the child's mind. "And you're just living-here! Why don't you live in-in "-what country, out of all the intoxicating geography of romance, would be her choice? "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa" floated into her memory -"in Vallombrosa?” "Is it near here?” asked the boy. “It sounds like comic opera." "It isn't comic anything," said Rue, indignantly. "It's a epic, though, by Mr. Milton. He was blind. Thick as fallen leaves in Vallombrosa.' Doesn't it sound peaceful and golden, with lovely rustly leaves in all the woods? I shouldn't wonder a bit if you could walk in them up to your waist." "That would be bully. Do you suppose there are heaps of nuts there?" "Oh yes, of course," Rue boldly ventured. "Chestnuts and hickory-nuts and butternuts and lots of other kinds of nuts I have forgotten. Oh yes, and"Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd With jellies smoother than the creamy curd--" The boy licked his lips appreciatively. "I guess I'll have to take a trip there." "Let me go with you," said Rue, all eagerness. “Are you sure about the name?” "Vallombrosa. I'm sure it must be a real place, for it's in a book. Grandfather had me learn pages and pages by heart. It's almost like the Bible. It must be true." rowing little holes with his toes in the good mud. Rue's gaze was fixed on his face. She was thinking about his mother. He knew it and was made uncomfortable. "Shall I learn you how to whistle on a grass?" he demanded, bluntly. "I know how, thank you," she answered a little haughtily, her lids still level on his face. "Jerush!" The boy jumped to his feet and looked behind. A startled gray squirrel clutched its breast dramatically, and then flattened itself barklike on the overhanging limb. It arranged its tail symmetrically along the ridge of its back and awaited developments. "She's not there at all," said the boy. "But I can tell you how she looks," replied the girl. "She has a laughing, crying face, and hair like the Lady of Shalott's, in coils and curlicues. What color? Oh, I don't know that. I only see the shape it makes, big twisted vines around her head." "What makes you talk like that?" "I don't know," said Rue, her vision escaping from her. "I felt it in my fingers. You know sometimes I have queer dreams in my fingers." "Crazy!" "Yes, my fingers dance and want to do things. Then if I run quick and get some putty, they make shapes for me. I "I have a railway guide at home. I'll don't make the shapes. My fingers do. look it up," said the boy. "When shall we start?" "I must tell mother about it first. Maybe she'd like to go with us. My mother isn't very well this summer. That's why she has the bungalow and me with her." "I'm sure she'd like Vallombrosa," said Rue, carnestly. "I don't know much about mothers, for I never had one, but in books they are lovely." The boy was silent, twisting grasses around his finger. They still sat by the brook, on two stones side by side. The My fingers have eyes and ears and are just like people.” The boy's inky-lashed gray eyes had a fascinating way of crinkling up as he smiled and listened. Rue's autobiographical reminiscences became more vivid and correspondingly less truthful with this bright glance feathering upon her. The boy became fired with desire for empirical demonstration. He was most assiduous in providing her with the best quality possible of mud from the brook's bed and mixing it with sand, according to her delighted directions. Rue showed herself a true genius in being fastidious as to conditions. "Everything must be or "Mighty perticklar, ain't they?" he said, admiringly. He regarded with respect her small mud-stained hands. 66 Nobody can look but myself," she said with an air of being the mouthpiece of royalty. The boy had worn on his face the expression of an audience before the first curtain goes up. It quickly changed to the expression after the announcement that the prima donna has a slight cold and will not appear. Rue felt under her apron before she ventured a statement. "So am I," she declared; "I'm thin as an apron on the clothes-line.” They both exulted over this simile and proceeded to lay plans for a banquet. "Let's you and me build a fire, and then we won't have to go home for dinner." "I hate napkins and waiting for dessert," assented Rue. "We don't have napkins much in the bungalow, and we eat dessert at any time. Often we eat it first, and sometimes when there isn't any we have sher "Aw, come off!" he pleaded; but Rue's bet for breakfast instead.” face did not relent. "You must go away. Still farther! Where I can't see you. I'll call you when I'm ready." The boy hid himself behind a bush. Hurry up. This is like being out in proverbs," he called, and then trembled, lest even that vocal proof of his nearness should release the spell. After a time he was summoned. 66 Why, it's a fish,-the very fish I lost! Bully for you! Look at them fins and the teenty scales, as natural as life. It was curved just like that, too, when it bounced back into the water. Jerush! 'twas a pity I let that fellow go.” The verisimilitude of Rue's image reawakened his grief at his recent bereavement. Rue rose and stamped her fish into shapelessness again. "Good glory! What are you doing?" "I hate them after they're finished," she said. "It seems wicked," the boy meditated. "I know it. Sometimes they beg me to let them live. But it was only a mud fish. I suppose if I were Jesus I could have said to that fish, Arise, take up thy bed. O fish, and swim! and he would have done it verily. It sounds sort of funny, doesn't it? but He wouldn't have told the fish to walk, would He?" “Oh, how nice! Your mother mustn't be very much grown up," exclaimed Rue. "Great-aunt Serena has white curls, and never unfolds her handkerchief till on the way home from church. When does your mother unfold hers? I like to unfold mine in sermon-time, for it gives me something to do. Aunt Serena says it's a mussy habit. I'd rather be mussy than be fussy, wouldn't you?" "You go and hunt up some brush for the fire while I clean the fish," said Lillo. "Then I'll show you how to fry trout, eh?" Rue was acquiescence itself in the presence of masculine decision. She liked to be ordered about by the sparkling gray eyes. "Do you like timothy-grass ends? I think they're delicious. We'll have them for asparagus." The boy was not good at philosophiz- in character, were added to the repast. ing, so Rue proceeded: "Here's cigarettes for the finish," said Arise, O brother, swim. And the lit- wicked Lillo, plucking a handful of those tle fish would have obeved." everlasting-flowers known to children as Indian tobacco. They were fragrant and budded brown. "I suppose so," said the boy, petrified by the theological turn the discussion had taken. He began to feel empty. "Say! talkin' of fish, ain't you hungry? I'm hollow through and through." "I don't know how to smoke," said Rue, regretfully, "but I think I could learn." |