She looked about her.
“I’ll straighten around a bit, I believe. Empty that tub, and open the windows, Mr. Dale, and I’ll get the broom and give the cabin a thorough cleaning. And then before I go I’ll set some yeast for you that’ll raise the cover off the pail in no time.”
Later as I was holding the dust pan for Wanza, Joey came from the cedar room fresh and smiling in the white shirt, the Windsor tie in his hand. Wanza laid aside her broom, and with deft fingers fastened the tie into a wonderful bow beneath the boy’s chin. He kissed us both, and we went with him to the meadow bars where Buttons was tethered. I lifted him to the saddle and stood looking after him with a thrill of pride as he rode away. In his new white shirt and clean corduroy trousers, with his hair carefully brushed and his adorable brown face aglow and his big bright eyes radiant with happiness he was a charming enough picture of boyhood; and a prick of pleasure so sharp as to be almost pain ran through me as he jauntily blew me a kiss, and cried:
“I have my penny for the cradle-roll lady, and I have not forgot my handkerchief.”
That night I dropped asleep in the Dingle and again I dreamed of Wanza. She came in her pink gown and bare feet as she had come before; but this time she carried loaves of steaming, sweet-smelling bread in her arms; and she came straight to my side, saying: “This bread is sweet and wholesome, you poor, poor fellow.” It seemed to me that she knelt and fed me portions of the bread with pitying fingers. And never had morsel tasted more sweet.
As the days went by, in spite of Wanza’s promises, the girl came but seldom to Cedar Dale. And when I met her on the river road or in the village, she seemed distrait and strangely shy and awkward, and vastly uncommunicative, so that I felt forlorn enough; and I was wholly out of touch with my wonder woman.
I applied myself feverishly to my writing. All day long I labored in my shop, in order to earn the daily bread for Joey and myself, but each night I wrote. The novel was almost finished; and something told me it was good.
The weeks passed, and August was waning. The foliage was yellowing along the river that crawled like a golden, sluggish serpent in and out among the brittle rushes. September was waiting with lifted paint brush. The beauty of the dreamy, ripe hours made my senses ache. The earth seemed to lie in a trembling sleep, folded in fiery foliage. The hills were plumed with trees of flame. At night the moon’s face was warm and red, all day the sun burned copper colored through a light blue haze.
There was something melting and dreamy in the days as they slipped past—days when I found it hard to labor in the shop—the woods were melodious still with bird voices, and all outdoors called to me.
I took a week’s vacation and fished hard by the village, where the stream threads the meadows; companioned by Father O’Shan, I rode along the river bank in the sunset and tramped the illumined fields starred with sumach, and in the moonlight during that week, I sometimes allowed myself to drift in my canoe on the river, thinking, thinking, of Haidee—of the narrow oval of her face curtained in dark hair streams, of the shadowy eyes of her, of her sweet warm smile.