"All right—there!"
Andy suppressed a burst of laughter and hurried back to report to Minerva.
For four enchanted weeks the old comedy of life was thus played by the boy and girl in sweet and utter unconsciousness of its meaning. He worked only in the mornings and rushed home for lunch unusually early. The afternoon usually found them seated side by side slowly driving over the quiet country roads. Two battlefields of the civil war, where his father had led a regiment of troops in the last desperate engagement with Sherman's army two weeks after Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, kept them busy each afternoon for a week.
At night they sat on the moonlit porch behind the big pillars and he talked to her of the great things of life with simple boyish enthusiasm. Sometimes they walked side by side through the rose-scented lawn and paused to hear the love song of a mocking-bird whose mate was busy each morning teaching her babies to fly.
The world had become a vast rose garden of light and beauty, filled with the odors of flowers and spices and dreamy strains of ravishing music.
And behind it all, nearer crept the swift shadow whose tread was softer than the foot of a summer's cloud.