Mr. Opp listened and understood. They were all whispering about one thing, and he wanted to whisper about it, too. It was the simple theme of love without variations—love, minus problems, minus complications, minus consequences. He took out his little packet of letters and read them through; then, unmindful of the chill, he stretched himself under the tree and listened to the birds until the twilight silenced them.
[p227]
When he reached home at last, Miss Kippy met him at the door with a happy cry of welcome.
“D.,” she said, with her arm through his, and her cheek rubbing his sleeve, “I’ve been good. I’ve let my hair stay up all day, and Aunt Tish is making me a long dress like a lady.” She looked at him shyly and smiled, then she pulled his head down and whispered, “If I’m very good, when I grow up, can I marry Mr. Hinton?”
Miss Kippy, too, had been listening to the bird-song.
[p228]
XIII
t was May when Willard Hinton arrived at the Cove and took up his abode at Mrs. Gusty’s. For the first week he kept to his bed, but at the end of that time he was able to crawl down to the porch and, under the protection of dark glasses and a heavy shade, sit for hours at a time in the sunshine. The loss of his accustomed environment, the ennui that ensues from absolute idleness, the consciousness that the light was growing dimmer day by day, combined to plunge him into abysmal gloom.
He shrank from speaking to any one, he scowled at a suggestion of sympathy, he treated Mr. Opp’s friendly overtures with open discourtesy. Conceiving himself on the rack of torture, he set his [p229] teeth and determined to submit in silence, but without witnesses.
One endless day dragged in the wake of another, and between them lay the black strips of night that were heavy with the suggestion of another darkness pending. When sleep refused to come, he would go out into the woods and walk for hours, moody, wretched, and sick to his innermost soul with loneliness.
The one thing in the whole dreary round of existence that roused in him a spark of interest was his hostess. She bestowed upon him the same impersonal attention that she gave her fowls. She fed him and cared for him and doctored him as she saw fit, and after these duties were performed, she left him to himself, pursuing her own vigorous routine in her own vigorous way.