Joy stared at him. What he said made her speechless with astonishment at first, but she controlled herself enough to say.
“Stop by an’ see me an’ Ma, sometimes. Please, Cun April. We gits so awful lonesome after dark.”
April promised he would. Promised in words that were very gentle. Then he stalked on, a tall lonely shadow, moving under the trees.
April came to see Big Sue that very night, dropping by so unexpectedly that the sight of him made her dumb for a while. She tried to be natural, to hide her agitation, but her breath caught fast in her throat every time she opened her mouth to talk, and her words were uncertain and stammering.
But April paid little heed to her. He seemed scarcely to know she was there, for his eyes spent much of the time looking at Joy. Breeze thought he saw them flash once or twice, but it may have been the firelight in them.
April declared he had eaten supper and cared for nothing either to eat or drink, but Joy fixed him a cup of water, sweetened with wild honey, flavored with bruised mint leaves, from the mint-bed by the back door. When he tasted it he smiled, and the dull fire in the chimney blazed up, and everything seemed brighter, more joyful than in many a long day.
When April got up to go Joy followed him to the door. She made him shake hands with her and promise to come back very soon.
After that when Joy walked out in the dusk she always let Breeze know she’d rather go by herself. Not that she ever hurt his feelings, but she made some sort of flimsy excuse to be rid of him. He hadn’t shut up the coop where the hen and youngest biddies slept, or he hadn’t cut up enough fat kindling wood, or couldn’t he go fetch a fresh bucket of water from the spring?
Then Breeze discovered that April walked with Joy. He had forgotten Big Sue altogether.
Once Breeze saw them walking shoulder to shoulder, arm touching arm. They talked so softly their words were drowned by the rustle of the leaves under their feet. When April stopped and bent his face so close to Joy’s that she drew back a little, Breeze’s heart almost quit beating. He let them go on unwatched, hidden by the deepening twilight.