“So the money is hung up for the next dozen years, as far’s any benefit to the invention is concerned,” he went on presently, just before his own home was reached. “I’d better be putting my time into something else, I guess,” with a raw scrape in the tones. “How–how about a machine for the manufacture of paper clothing, eh, or airdrawn rugs–” sarcastically–“prosperity, riches, in that! Ha! Get thee behind me, Satan–but don’t push!” added the inventor whimsically, thrusting his head out of the auto window,–with a sound that was neither laugh nor groan.
“Get thee behind me, Satan–and don’t push!”
Tears sprang to those blue eyes of Pemrose now, as she recalled the half-piteous tone in the voice.
Toandoah was discouraged. Toandoah was tempted–tempted to sacrifice the highest claim of his intellect, his original dream, or the dream whose originality he had made practical, of reaching the heavenly bodies; of being a pioneer in exploring the Universe outside his own earth and its enveloping atmosphere; of finding out the secrets of that mysterious upper air, and where it ended, of getting back a record of it–the Thunder Bird’s golden egg, the first record from space.
And the girl in her buoyant young heart of hearts felt that hope–nay, certainty–were still there, green, springing, as the first signs of happy springtime in the world outside.
How–how was she to make him feel it; she his little Wise Woman, his laboratory pal?
Her eye went to the emblems upon her wall: a pine tree on a poster, typical of strength, a banner with a sunburst, the sun shedding warmth upon the earth.
And then–then! To the little squat figure of a woman, as the Indians depicted her, with a torch in her hand, Wisdom’s torch–her own emblem as Wantaam of the Council Fire.
But there was another representation of that Wantaam–that Wise Woman. Pem had designed it herself, painted it herself upon a two-foot poster, gaining thereby a green honor-bead for handicraft.
And before that the girl, wrestling with the heavy disappointment of that tantalizing will, brought up–her hands clasped.