"Blow him again to me
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps."
Another pause—and still more softly:
"Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet;
Make it from simple flowers
Plucked from the lowly valley
After the summer showers."
The coolness of the August wind touched Amos' face, "Oh! Patience,
Patience—" he murmured.
Lydia sat for a moment or two with the sleeping baby in her arms, looking down on her with a curious gentle intentness. Then she rose carefully, and as carefully deposited little Patience on the bed. This done, she untied the balloon and carried it out with her to the little landing. There was a window here into which the August moon was beginning to shine. Lydia sat down with the balloon and felt of it carefully.
"Aren't balloons the most wonderful things, almost as wonderful as bubbles," she murmured. "I love the smell of them. Think what they can do, how they can float, better than birds! How you want to squeeze them but you don't dast! I'd rather have gone to the circus than to heaven."
In a moment she heard steps and greetings and her father leading his friend into the house. Then she slipped down the stairs and into the night. A dozen times she ran up and down the yard, the balloon like a fettered bird tugging at her wrist.
"I love it as much as little Patience does," she murmured. "Oh, I wish it was mine."
Finally, she ran out of the gate and up the street to the one fine house of which the street boasted. She stole up to the door and fastened the string of the balloon to the door bell, gave the bell a jerk and fled.
As she ran down the street, a boy, leaning against the gate-post next her own, cried, "What's the rush, Lydia?"