“Too many people sit around and do nothing all day as ’tis,” Miss Doe said.
“I recall how you used to play Heart Bowed Down and Lucy Lammermoor. ‘Farewell, farewell my own true love.’ I recall one night ...”
“It’s Theodosia plays the fiddle now,” Anthony said. “I give over now to the young hoss. Plays, egad, yes she does. Takes right after it.”
Theodosia turned to the paper dolls with grave willingness and preoccupation. Her blood flowed warmly because of the praise, spreading over her like a soft mantle.
The girls went for a walk with their uncle one bright mid-morning, going to a tobacco barn which stood down in a creek valley beyond two fields. Of the dogs, Blix and Roscoe were allowed, and they ran smelling at the path, quietly humble when they were called. The other dogs were locked into the old apple house, the place where they were kept when they were not wanted running about, where they were seasoned for the hunt.
Some abundance within herself would not let Theodosia acquiesce completely to the hour, to any hour or to any experience, as being sufficient. She kept on the way a pleasant sense of her grandfather sitting reading under the pine before the house, knowing a curious joy in his absence and enjoying the walk more intensely in that she enjoyed it for him as well as for herself. The corn in the field was very high, near its maturing. Tom Singleton wondered and delighted in the height of the corn. His pride in the high corn seemed then to touch her vague distrust of pride and delight, and she smiled with him happily, swinging his hand.
“Some of it fifteen feet high, Ladybug, if it’s one inch. Have to tear the shock down to pluck it.”
A humming came from one end of the cornfield, audible as they passed, and there myriads of bees were working over the corn tassels, taking the pollen of the corn. A walnut tree glistened in the light. The edges of the leaves made crystals on the green bank of the tree, sharp facets of brightness on green leaves. Theodosia did not know the name of this hard, brilliant tree, but she knew some response to the scintillating surfaces and lined edges where the sun met the leaves.
“This-here, it’s a walnut tree. A fine old walnut,” he said. “And what’s this, Ladybug?”
“That’s the queen-anne’s-lace-handkerchief,” he said when she could not reply. The name was itself a bright altar-cloth for some shrine in a valley, and Theodosia grew in all ways to comprehend the beauty of the weed, but insufficiency grew likewise, moving outward beyond every comprehended meaning and pleasure.