Revelation, long, lean, fast—shining in every hair, wet amber—rolled the whites of his eyes, too, at his girl-rider, with a remonstrating: “Well! aren’t we going on? Why stop here, on the edge of a black bog, where I’m in to my hocks—the mountain before us?”
But for once, Pemrose ignored that prudent horse-sense.
“Will you stretch the wire, the antenna, out to the tree for me? Or must I do it myself?”
She pressed the fishing-reel, coiled with two hundred feet of outdoor antenna—upon her companion, slipped the steel creeper upon her heel, driving its spikes into the wet ground—the radio headpiece, carved with Camp Fire symbols, upon her head.
“Merciful—green—hop-toads!” The boy ground his teeth. “Folly—raving folly, but I suppose I’ll do it.... Oh! so ear-rly in the morning, of course you may pick up a murmur—dim murmur—but as for anything important!” He shook his head—needing badly the support of the hop-toads, as he uncoiled the bright, bronze wire upon the air. “Not six o’clock—y-yet.” He glanced around.
Six o’clock—six o’clock on a September morning, lacking that a little, and a girl standing, presently, with her heel in the mountain bog, with her aërial out to a gnarled pine tree—one of the scattered pines and maples around her—with the red of the mountain fire-weed on her hectic lips—a little faded, a little drooping, a little yellow at the corners.
All around her the golden-rod dreamed—a shining dream.
“She’s more stubborn than you are—old Sickle Face!” The boy bent to Cartoon’s ear, flinging his arm over the horse’s neck, as he watched her. “This is—mulish.... Oh-h! you may come in on a whisper, I suppose—just the parings of a whisper from one of those boiled owls who—who sit up all night over it and keep on into daylight—I’ve done—it—myself,” he softly hissed.
“Oh-h! hush.... Your—racket!”
