“Come here!” she cried, in a small head voice, not unlike a bird's twitter.
Jeff lumbered on clumsily. His high boots had become suddenly very heavy.
“I'm so glad to see you. I've just tired poor mother out—I'm always tiring people out—and she's gone back to the house to write letters. Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!”
Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield's presence, painfully seated himself on the edge of a very low stone, which had the effect of bringing his knees up on a level with his chin, and affected an ease glaringly simulated.
“Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff—it is so comfortable.”
Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing down like a falling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a recumbent position at a respectful distance from the little figure.
“There, isn't it nice?”
“Yes, Miss Mayfield.”
“But, perhaps,” said Miss Mayfield, now that she had him down, “perhaps you too have got something to do. Dear me! I'm like that naughty boy in the story-book, who went round to all the animals, in turn, asking them to play with him. He could only find the butterfly who had nothing to do. I don't wonder he was disgusted. I hate butterflies.”
Love clarifies the intellect! Jeff, astonished at himself, burst out, “Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the butterfly only hez a day or two to—to—to live and—be happy!”