“Immediately after luncheon; I’ve got a plan. I’m going to call up Arline and Sally—Betty Ayres wants to come with us, too—and tell them about it; we’ll time our start so’s to arrive on the playground a little after two o’clock, before the playground teachers get back from dinner, and if little ’Becca is there (did I tell you I had found out that her name is Rebecca?) we’ll just inveigle her into a shed and dress her up in the new finery, throw away the old shoes, perhaps, the grey frock, too—then, when the teachers turn up and the dancing begins, the other children won’t know her.”
“She won’t know herself. Did you find out whether she was born deaf and dumb?”
“No. She became stone-deaf at four years old after scarlet fever; then she gradually lost the power of speech, too, so her mother told one of the playground teachers. Her parents are Russian Jews who have only been a couple of years in this country. The teacher thinks that some of the croaking sounds she makes are fragments of words in her own tongue that she remembers. And once when some boys were shouting ‘Swing! Swing!’ upon the playground, ’Becca said ‘Swing!’ quite clearly, as if she caught some vibration of the sound.”
“I should think she could be taught to speak again by and by.” Olive looked hopeful. “Come out of your dreamland, Jessica,” she added laughingly; “stick to Rebecca and the playground plan! Whenever you’re in the library, morning, noon or night, you’re staring at that stained-glass window. I believe you’ve fallen in love with the young scribe who’s bending over a parchment book in it.”
“No, but I’m in love with his brown robe.” Jessica’s eyes went up to the rich gold-brown of the young monk’s habit. “I’ve just been trying to get something like that tint on my palette up-stairs, so as to paint the ceremonial dress on the figure of a Camp Fire Girl. Besides”—the blue-grey eyes of Morning-Glory rested reverently upon the soft radiance of the painted window through which the daylight flickered, glorified—“besides, as you know, Olive, my father was a stained-glass artist; he designed beautiful windows like that, worked out his designs in water-colors on paper and afterward—when the great sheet of glass had been properly prepared—painted the window itself—oil-painting, using metallic paints.”
“Is that how it’s done?” queried Olive. “I love this library window. And I like to study the stained-glass windows in church, too—sometimes I forget to say my prayers when I’m looking at them!” in merry penitence.
“I, too! My father used to paint the saints’ and cherubs’ heads so beautifully, painting both sides of the glass, the figure in some dull tint, brown or grey, on the right side, to face the people and the brilliant, the illuminating colors, as he called them, upon the back, the other side of the sheet of glass, so’s to shine through,” looking up at the translucent rays streaming through the brown monkish figure.
“Did you use to watch him while he was painting?”
“Occasionally I did, perched on a chair beside his tall, oblong easel that had the glass upon it.... He let me when he could, because he had it all planned out that I—too——”
The last words were very thin and low and broke off, their snapped thread being lost in the rich tangle of colors, ruby and gold, with other glories wonderfully interwoven, which bathed that corner of the room where the pictured medieval scribe sat poring over his written book.