And that day the guest really came.
It was a warm, sunny day in October and the leaves were just beginning to turn. As they climbed the hill above Meadow Brook and came within sight of the valley, great splashes of crimson flung out like banners across the valley and yellow glinted across the purples and browns like patches of gold in the sunshine. There was a smell of burning leaves and sunshine in the air and the earth was sweet with autumn. Blue and yellow and white asters bordered the road that wound along the hill and dipped again into the valley among the trees. Purple grackles were stalking the fields in battalions, their stiff, black silk armor glinting in the sun, cawing of the weather and their coming need of flight. She could hear their hoarse, throaty voices as she lay and stared at the ceiling in her little lonely house under the maples.
And the air! How sweet and winey it had been!
She and Aunt Mary had climbed a fence and crossed a field till they reached the deep, sweet woods with its solemn cathedral silences and its lofty vaulted ceiling. How far away the world had seemed as they entered and trod the pine-strewn aisles and penetrated deep into the cloistered vistas. She remembered thinking that this must be where God stayed a good deal, it was so sweet and perfect. Above in the branches strange birds sent out wild, sweet notes, like snatches of celestial anthems. Favored birds to live in such safe and holy fastnesses. She remembered wondering if they ever flew down to Meadow Brook and fellowed with the common birds, picking up worms in garden paths, and draggling their feathers in the dust of the world like sparrows, or did they always stay here alone with God and praise?
They had found a mossy log to sit upon and a carpet of pine needles fragrant and deep, and there they had established themselves, the little girl lying full length upon the sweet bed of needles, the older woman sitting upon the log and reading. It was a story book they were reading, one of Louisa Alcott’s, was it “Under the Lilacs” or “Little Women”? “Under the Lilacs” of course, because it was where the little white circus dog Sancho appeared that she remembered first noticing the boy’s back.
There had been crickets droning somewhere, and a tinkling brook that murmured not far off, and no other sound save now and then a falling stick or bit of branch from some high tree top hurtling down, until, with the advent of that dog there had been a tiny human stir, an almost imperceptible sound of giving attention, and her eyes had been fastened on the gray-brown back, the tousled bright head topped by the torn old baseball cap just a few steps away in the dim shadowed aisle down which she was looking. At first she scarcely recognized it as not a part of the woods, so still it sat, that square, young back in its faded flannel shirt, held in a listening attitude. Then gradually she had become aware of the boy’s presence, of the fishing rod in his hand, of the bank that he must be sitting on which had seemed but a level stretch to her first vision. She had turned a quick glance to Aunt Mary, but Aunt Mary only looked up an instant, paused to recognize that there was some one there, smiled knowingly and went on with the story.
It must have been an hour they sat thus listening to the reading, the boy and the fishing rod not moving, the little girl watching with fascinated, dreamy eyes as if she were looking at a picture that might come alive any minute, and then suddenly something happened. The rod bent quickly down with a jerk, the boy’s arm went out with a quick, involuntary motion, and a fish swept up from below somewhere in a great circle and landed floundering on the grassy bank.
Joyce sat up quickly with round eyes watching the boy’s manœuvres with the fish, and Aunt Mary stopped reading and looked on with interest too. The boy looked up at last shame-faced and flushed:
“Aw, gee!” he said, “I didn’t go to interrupt you. That fish just got on my hook an’ I pulled it before I thought. That’s a cracker-jack story you’re reading.”
“Why, I’m glad to be interrupted by such an interesting happening,” Aunt Mary answered him. “What a beautiful fish! What kind is it?”