“How strange that it should have been to-day!” It had been on Shirley’s lips to question, but the door had closed, and she went slowly down-stairs. She sat a while thinking, but at length grew restless and began to walk to and fro across the floor, her hands clasped behind her head so that the cool air filled her flowing sleeves. In the hall she could hear the leisurely kon-kon—kon-kon of the tall clock. The evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was threaded with the airy fiddle-fiddle of crickets in the grass and punctuated with the rain-glad cloap of a frog.
Presently, with the mellow whirrings that accompany the movements of such antiques, the ancient timepiece struck ten. At the sound she threw a thin scarf over her shoulders and stole out to the porch. Its deep odorous shadow was crossed by oblongs of lemon-colored light from the windows. Before the kitchen door Ranston’s voice was humming huskily:
“‘Steal away; Steal away!
Steal away to Jesus.
Steal away! Steal away home—’”
accompanied by the soft alto of Aunt Judy the cook.
Shirley stepped lightly down to the wet grass. Looking back, she could see her mother’s lighted blind. All around the ground was splotched with rose-petals, looking in the squares of light like bloody rain. Beyond the margin of this brightness all was in darkness, for the moon was not yet risen, and a light damp breeze passed in a slow rhythm as if the earth were breathing moistly in its sleep. Somewhere far away sounded the faint inquiring woo-o-o of an owl and in the wet branches of a walnut tree a pigeon moved murmurously.
She skimmed the lawn and ran a little way down the lane. A shuffling sound presently fell on her ear.
“Is that you, Unc’ Jefferson?” she called softly.
“Yas’m!” The footsteps came nearer. “Et’s me, Miss Shirley.” He tittered noiselessly, and she could see his bent form vibrating in the gloom. “Yo’ reck’n Ah done fergit?”
“No, indeed. I knew you wouldn’t do that. How is he?”