“Say!” called Bardek. “What you mean by zat ‘home-run’; eh?”
“Just you watch Ned Morris,” she replied, looking at Ned with the compelling face of a determined mother. “If he doesn’t make one without so much as another word I’ll call strikes on him.... One! Two—”
“I’m off,” laughed Ned, but he swung his hand and wafted a suspicious-looking salute at her.
“Now for work,” said Gorgas firmly, donning her apron.
But instead, she looked out of the window at the robins frantically building their nests. One set was at work just above in the eaves. Most interesting chaps; so energetic and serious. The silence in the shop caught her attention. She turned around. Bardek, too, was leaning over his bench and staring at the greening world outside.
He turned swiftly and met her gaze. One deprecatory glance he tossed toward the idle work-bench and then a meaningful sweep toward all of outdoors. They both stood silent, stirred by the invitation of the morning; and they laughed like guilty children about to slip away from school.
Suddenly he spread out his hands and broke into vehement Italian.
“The mother is calling all her little children,” he protested. “Wise old Demeter is leaning over the edge of the black pit of Hell-mouth, talking love talk to her daughter Proserpina, who comes forth with garlands and sprigs of little blossoming things and all the breezes of spring. Come, Proserpina mia! Let us do a bacchanal in the white sunlight, push through branch and briar, and loaf on the bare earth and sing the song of the hour!... Come!”
“Come?” she echoed. “Let someone try to stop me. Wait! Just wait till I change this clumsy skirt.” Into a capacious closet she shut herself and in half a minute sprang forth. “Comme ça!” she fell into the familiar French. “We’re off! I feel so healthy and strong that I could run a dozen miles without taking a long breath.”