Two by two, yes, Jessica and her little silent partner leading with a vim, she singing for both!
Again Sally’s throat tickled and the firefly bore a little mist upon its wings as she noted the new spirit which had crept into the deaf-and-dumb child’s movements, into the clumsy, ill-shod feet, into the grey, stocky little figure, into the small, stubby fingers which no longer plucked wistfully at the gathers of her coarse frock, but brightly spread themselves in an inspired attempt to copy the waving gestures of the wonderful partner in shining lavender and white who had dropped from the clouds for her.
The sight was moving. The firefly in Sally’s eyes went in out of the rain.
“She’s going to be initiated as a Fire Maker at our next Council Fire gathering,” she murmured, nodding toward Jessica and hardly caring whether her impromptu companion understood her meaning or not. “But, oh”—blinking bright drops from her eyelids—“she ought to be a Torch Bearer! She’s a Torch Bearer already! Look at the light which she has brought into that little dumb girl’s eyes—she has lit a torch in her heart.”
“Well! I guess she has,” returned the big stranger in a moved voice, too.
“I don’t know whether you know much about Camp Fire Girls.”—Sesooā dashed the bright drops away and the firefly reappeared, hovering over a dimple—“but when a girl joins the society she takes a symbolic name, generally an Indian one, that signifies something she aims particularly to do or be. Jessica chose that of a climbing flower, the morning-glory—or its nearest Indian equivalent—for some little secret reason of her own; that’s what made it seem funny—incongruous—you know, when you said she danced like a stormy petrel, a Mother Carey chicken,” poutingly.
“Ah-h!” The stranger drew his massive brows together ruminating for a minute, his eyes on the wavy ribbon dance. “Ah! but, maybe, the two aren’t so wide apart as you think.” He turned and nodded at her. “Take a stormy morning at sea, now. I’ve seen the dawn, the morning-glory to be, come up, just a little grey flutter in the sky—like a dove-grey chicken that the foam had hatched—the foam that was piled like a great, pale egg against the horizon! It’s a funny world, little girl,” with an all-comprehensive wink of the sea-blue eye. “Things an’ meanings of things are never such miles apart but that you can link ’em, somehow; an’ that’s true of more than foam and flower!”
“Why—Captain Andy!”
“Why-y! Miss Winter!”
Cousin Anne had risen suddenly from the bench under the catalpa tree, shocked at seeing one of the girls whom she was chaperoning holding free converse with a stranger. Now she was advancing with warmly outstretched hand.