“Is your head better?” she asked; her full tones did not jar upon the eloquent silence, but her words reminded him that he was mortal.
“I had forgotten it,” he said. “I must think before I can tell.”
She laughed—just one or two notes fluted forth, but in their cadence was the soul of music. It was as if mirth, self-wrought, bubbled up beneath the dignity of this stately creature, as the living spring laps against the marble basin which surrounds it; and as the tinkle of the spring has more in it than melody, so Vashti Lansing’s laughter was instinct with more than amusement. There was in it the thrill of triumph, the timbre of mockery, and the subtlety of invitation.
“Then,” she said, “we will take it for granted that it is better. You are like father and the thistles in his fingers. He often tells me how he has been tormented by some thistle, and when I go to take it out, he has to search the fingers of each hand before he can find out where it is. He sometimes cannot even tell which hand it’s in.”
“Well,” said Sidney; “I am like your father. I’ve lost my head.”
“But if it ached,” said she; “it was a happy loss.”
“I hope it will be a happy loss,” he said wistfully.
She smiled gently and let fall her eyelids; no flicker of colour touched her cheeks, nor was there any suggestion of shyness in her countenance. Thus a goddess might veil her eyes that her purposes might not be read until such time as she willed to reveal them.
Mabella heard voices upon the porch and came flying out.
Sidney could not find it in his heart to be impatient with this bright-faced girl, whose heart was so full of tenderness to all living things that little loving syllables crept into her daily speech, and “dear” dropped from her lips as gently and naturally as the petals of a flower fall upon the grass, and as the flower petals brighten for a little the weed at the flower’s foot, so Mabella’s sweet ways gladdened the hearts of those about her.