That same evening I said to Wanza:
“I was very stupid not to understand that you shot first with the twenty-two, and then dispatched the bear with the thirty-thirty. I thought your father killed the bear. Why did you not tell me?”
“It didn’t make any difference as I could see who killed the bear. The main thing was to kill it,” was the reply I received.
The next day Wanza informed me that Mrs. Olds’ patient was able to sit up in bed. “I’ve been talking to him,” she added, with a flirt of her head. “If I was a good reader, now, I’d be glad to read to him a bit.”
“I think you are doing very well as you are, Wanza,” I replied.
There surged through me the instinctive dislike, almost aversion, I had felt on the night of his coming to Cedar Dale, and my tone was stern.
“He wants me to talk to him though, he says. He says he needs perking up. My, he knows a lot, don’t he, Mr. Dale? Seems like he knows everything, ’most. And I do think he’s handsome. He’s got the finest eyes! Though there’s something odd about them, too, if you stop to think. The worst with handsome eyes is that you don’t stop to think! I’m going out now to get some hardhack for him. He says he don’t remember ever seeing the pink kind. What do you call it, Mr. Dale?”
“Spiraea tomentosa. Wait a bit, Wanza,” I said, “I’ll go with you.”
We went to the woods. It was morning, and the freshness of the hour was incomparable. The birds were singing with a sort of rapture. And our way through the silent greenwood aisles was wholesome and sweet with the breath of pine and balm o’ Gilead. The vistas were rosy with pink hardhack; on either side feathery white clusters of wild clematis festooned the thickets, and here and there the bright faces of roses peeped out at us from tangles of undergrowth.
I know not what spirit of willfulness possessed Wanza. I think she had it in her mind to arouse my jealousy by praise of the big man. Her talk was all of him. Finally I had my say.