“I was on my way to call on you. Is your father home?”
Surprised at her own boldness, Connie slipped lightly to the ground and stood beside him.
“Yes,” she rejoined awkwardly, “he is. I’ll go with you.”
Donald spoke again, with a playful smile that caused the girl to flush with a mixture of pleasure and confusion. “I thought when I saw you poised on Pegasus’s back that a close inspection would disclose a pair of transparent, gauzy wings, but,” peering at her shoulders, “evidently the rider is clipped as well.”
As they walked up the path, Andy following, it seemed to Connie that they were strolling through the fields of Elysium.
At first glance Donald saw that Wainwright’s log cabins had been built by a rank novice. The walls were rakishly askew, the corners out of plumb, and the joints showed big gaps filled with moss. The rough construction of the dissimilar, rambling cluster of houses served to enhance rather than mar the wild grandeur of this oasis on the rocky mountain-side.
Into this valley poured a mountain stream which had gouged out for itself a canyon, through which its waters swept and tumbled, as green as jade in the sunlight, like emerald in the shadow, and snowy white in the roaring rapids. On the other side, the towering profiles of the cliffs were edged with stunted growths of pine and spruce, while here and there were soft patches of green moss clinging to the damp places.
The few acres wrested from the wilderness were rich with a green carpet of clover and timothy, and in a pasture at the corner a sleek Jersey cow was feeding diligently. In the same enclosure a deer nibbled delicately at the tender shoots. A flock of pure white ducks, in single file, waddled down the hill and plunged with a subdued quacking into a small pond. Within a yard enclosed by a fence of split cedar the lusty crow of a rooster sounded above the cackling of his family.
The low walls of the main cabin were festooned with a mass of wild creepers in which the wild honeysuckle predominated. Wild flowers, each species separate, were growing in neat round plots bordered with carefully arranged stones. Scores of birds flitted through the low bushes, rested on fences and roofs, or hopped unafraid through the grass. Siskins and finches there were, in gold or olive; blue jays and their cousins, the camp-robbers; bluebirds; sparrows singing sweetly; waxwings “zeeping” through the garden; warblers gurgling softly; scolding grey flycatchers and numerous other species unknown to Donald.
A camp-robber flew to Connie’s outstretched arm. From the capacious pocket of her overalls she brought a crust of bread, at which the bird pecked hungrily. Another bird lighted on the brim of Andy’s wide hat. The little man attempted to peer up at it without moving his head, and the effort set his bushy eyebrows dancing. “Get off there, you blighter!” he growled. “I don’t want any bloomin’ trimmin’s on me ’ead gear.”