Then Laddie laughed.
"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me! It never occurred to me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its application. Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"
"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor. "I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what it did mean. It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."
"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie. "'A note of glee'—the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with congenial work."
"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."
"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie. "That was a whistle to keep up my courage. The joy was in the song, not in me! Last week was black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."
"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut! That fine team, flower bedecked, and the continuous concert!"
"But I did!" cried Laddie. "We have mirrors. That song can't be beaten. I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or disfigured. That was the pageant of summer passing in review. It represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to come later. You buy corn and wheat, don't you? They are vastly necessary. Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never should have taken place. Do you think your daughter found the spectacle at all moving?"
"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.
But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.