"He told me he did," said Charity flatly, and laid the paper on Ben's knee, leaning close. "This be the one with feathers restored."
"Oh, I see." Confusedly, Ben saw more than that. It had never occurred to him that lines of ink on paper could move and sing. A stream glittered with fragmented ice. Ben could feel the vulnerable pride of the swallow twitching a pert forked tail, tilting a round head toward distant cloud. And how should Charity have made him actually hear the slow yielding of a brook to the coming of spring? Those naked things huddled under the water—swallows maybe, or squirming babies, ambiguous, blind. The eye clung to them, not in laughter.
"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "I believe Mr. Carey would prefer to look at pictures another time."
Charity tried to ignore that. In nearness she was all little-girl softness and warmth, electric. Little?—thirteen.
"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "go and aid Clarissa with the refreshments. You should have remembered it before."
Ben blurted: "Charity, this is beautiful."
"Charity," said Madam Jenks.
Charity inhaled carefully. "Very well, Mama, I will leave the room."
The red comb popped. Ben had been half-prepared for that, and for the deferential scramble he now performed. Under cover of the commotion Charity vanished with the picture, Sultan gloomily following.
"Thankful heart!" The comb restored, Madam Jenks fanned herself. "Ah well, a difficult time of life I suppose. You have no idea, Mr. Carey, the hours of grief and dismay, I have sought guidance on my knees, the which she'll be the death of me yet considering the palpitations of my heart, nevertheless when the Lord calls me to my long home I shall certainly go."