The bird, thus adjured, maintained a severely non-committal dumbness.
“See!” triumphed Desirée, “Silence gives assent. He’s a heavenly little singer. Why, only this morning, he sang nearly all the first bar of ‘The Death of Ase’.”
“The which?”
“‘The Death of Ase.’ In the Peer Gynt suite, you know.”
“Oh, yes! Of course. Sure!” mumbled Caleb hastily. “I was thinkin’ of some other feller’s suite. An’ he sang that, did he? The clever little cuss!”
“Wasn’t he, though? And he’d only heard me play it once.”
“Pretty hard thing to sing, too!” supplemented Caleb, wisely.
“Caleb Conover,” she rebuked in cold admonition, “Look at me! No, in the eyes! There! Now, how often have I told you not to make believe? You treat me just as if I was a child. Why do you pretend to know about ‘The Death of Ase,’ you dear old simple humbug? Don’t you know I always find you out when you—?”
“I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t up on the things that int’rest you, girl,” he pleaded. “It’s rotten to feel you’ve got to talk down to me every time you speak about music or litterchoor or those things. An’—Lord! but I do hate to let on when I don’t understand things.”
“You understand more of the real things—the things that are worth while—than any other man alive,” she protested. “Now say goodbye and run on, or you’ll be late. Don’t forget to stop on the way back and let me know whether the lions eat Daniel or if Daniel—”