“Yes.” The weaver nodded. “And here–here is the Will being read!”
The girlish voice was lower now, the girlish feet treading doubtful ground, as she pointed again to those two quaint, stubby figures, with a third one reading from a parchment.
But there was no doubt at all in the young voice which presently gathered itself for a climax.
“And see–see there–those little yellow dots I’m weaving in now; those are gold pieces, father, the money that is coming to us from somewhere for you to finish your invention. Yes! and I’m going on to weave in the moon, too, and the little blue powder-flash before her face, to show the Thunder Bird has got there. For it is going to get there, you know!” Pem’s blue-star eyes were dim now, but in them was the wisdom of babes–the wisdom oft hid from the wise and prudent.
“Daddy-man!” She bowed her head over the pearl-woven prophecy, speaking very low. “I could always tell you my thoughts. Somehow, at that awful time of the train-wreck, when we were in the icy water, Una and I, before the boy came, the big boy who saved us, through–through all the ‘horripilation’, as he called it, I seemed to see a light; the–the Light of Light Eternal, as we sing–God–and I knew, oh-h! I knew-ew, at the last, that we weren’t going to dr-rown.... I know just as certainly now that you’re going to launch the Thunder Bird, to go-o where nothing–Earthly–has ever gone before.... Father-r!”
Silence fell upon that passionate little cry in the dim workshop.
Only the beauty of the pearl-woven thing upon the table spoke–the record to go down to posterity.
Then into the silence tiptoed the voice of a man, whimsical, slightly, yet with a touch of tender awe in it, too:
“And none knew the Wise Woman who saved the city!”