“Young mars’ feel ’way up in de clouds dis day,” he said to Aunt Daphne. “He wake up ez glad ez ef he done ’fessed ’ligion las’ night. Well, all de folkses cert’n’y ’joyed deyselves. Ol’ Mistah Fargo done eat ’bout forty uh dem jumbles. Ah heah him talkin’ ter Mars’ John. ‘Reck’n yo’ mus’ hab er crackahjack cook down heah,’ he say. Hyuh, hyuh!”
“G’way wid yo’ blackgyardin’!” sniffed Aunt Daphne, delighted. “Don’ need ter come eroun’ honey-caffuddlin’ me!”
“Dat’s whut he say,” insisted Uncle Jefferson; “he did fo’ er fac’!”
She drew her hands from the suds and looked at him anxiously. “Jeffe’son, yo’ reck’n Mars’ John gwineter fetch dat Yankee ’ooman heah ter Dam’ry Co’ot, ter be ouah mistis?”
“Humph!” scoffed her spouse. “Dat high-falutin’ gal whut done swaller de ramrod? No suh-ree-bob-tail! De oldah yo’ gits, de mo’ foolishah yo’ citations is! Don’ yo’ tek no mo’ trouble on yo’ back den yo’ kin keek off’n yo’ heels! She ain’ gwineter run dis place, er ol’ Devil-John tuhn ovah in he grave!”
Sunset found Valiant sitting in the music-room before the old square piano. In the shadowy chamber the keys of mother-of-pearl gleamed with dull colors under his fingers. He struck at first only broken chords, that became finally the haunting barcarole of Tales of Hoffmann. It was the air that had drifted across the garden when he had stood with Shirley by the sun-dial, in the moment of their first kiss. Over and over he played it, improvising dreamy variations, till the tender melody seemed the dear ghost of that embrace. At length he went into the library and in the crimsoning light sat down at the desk, and began to write:
“Dear Bluebird of mine:
“I can’t wait any longer to talk to you. Less than a day has passed since we were together, but it might have been eons, if one measured time by heart-beats. What have you been doing and thinking, I wonder? I have spent those eons in the garden, just wandering about, dreaming over those wonderful, wonderful moments by the sun-dial. Ah, dear little wild heart born of the flowers, with the soul of a bird (yet you are woman, too!) that old disk is marking happy hours now for me!
“How have I deserved this thing that has come to me?—sad bungler that I have been! Sometimes it seems too glad and sweet, and I am suddenly desperately afraid I shall wake to find myself facing another dull morning in that old, useless, empty life of mine. I am very humble, dear, before your love.
“Shall I tell you when it began with me? Not last night—nor the day we planted the ramblers. (Do you know, when your little muddy boot went trampling down the earth about their roots, I wanted to stoop down and kiss it? So dear everything about you was!) Not that evening at Rosewood, with the arbor fragrance about us. (I think I shall always picture you with roses all about you. Red roses the color of your lips!) No, it was not then that it began—nor that dreadful hour when you fought with me to save my life—nor the morning you sat your horse in the box-rows in that yew-green habit that made your hair look like molten copper. No, it began the first afternoon, when I sat in my motor with your rose in my hand! It has never left me since, by day or by night. And yet there are people in this age of airships and honking highways and typewriters who think love-at-first-sight is as out-of-date as our little grandmothers’ hoops rusting in the garret. Ah, sweetheart, I, for one, know better!