When Bird told their name, Tessie gave a little cry and said, “They’re what mother talks about that grew up in the wall below the big house at home where her father was a keeper, and the smell of them came in the cottage windows in the night air right to her, and she’s often said she’d cross the sea again to smell them if she had the price, and now she won’t have to take that trouble. That angel has found our winder for sure. Would you get me the little pitcher and some water in it yonder?”
The larger of the two rooms, the one with the window, had two clean beds in it, over which a newspaper picture of the Madonna and Child was pinned to the wall, two chairs, and an old bureau, while the smaller room, little more than a closet, held a table, a few dishes, and an oil cooking-stove, all as neat as wax. A pail of water stood on the table, from which Bird filled the pitcher, and set it on a chair by Tessie that she might herself arrange the flowers. Then, remembering that the policeman and Billy were waiting, she picked up her basket and her own flowers, and, promising to come the next week, groped her way downstairs again.
Bird did not see the tired mother, when she returned from her day’s scrubbing, enter the dark room and drawing a quick breath say, in an awe-struck voice, “I smell them—I smell the wallflowers! Sure, am I dreaming or dying?” or see the way in which she buried her face in the mass, laughing and crying together, when the lamp was lit and Tessie had told her the how and why of it.
There were dreary days often after this, when her uncle was away on long trips and her aunt was cross, but though Bird did not yet give up all hope of going back some day among her friends, or studying, as she had promised her father, she was learning the lesson of patience, which, after all, is the first and last one to know by heart.
Now the morning-glories had reached the window tops, and in the little bower above the clothes-lines she and Billy often sat as she told him stories of the real country, of Lammy and Twinkle, the old white horse, and the red peonies, and flew there in imagination. Then the child’s big eyes would flash as he gazed at her, and he always ended by asking, “When we stop being birds in this cage, we’ll fly right up there to your country and be real birds and see Lammy and Twinkle, won’t we?” And Bird always answered, “Yes,” to please him, but it was a word that meant nothing to her. So the summer wore on, and Bird did not go back to Laurelville.
[IX]
’RAM SLOCUM’S TAUNT
While Bird was putting away from her all thought of going back to Laurelville for a summer visit, Lammy Lane was trying in every way to bring about her return.
His mother was the only person in the family or village who really read Lammy aright and valued him at his worth. She never laughed at his various contrivances and mechanical inventions, and when he appeared to be star-gazing, she firmly believed that it was not idleness, but that he was interested in things other than the mere jog-trot work on the farm.