“If we knew any one had taken him,” I said, thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think—I think, Wanza, that Joey is dead.”
“I don’t think so! No, indeed!” Wanza returned with thrilling earnestness. “Oh, I feel sure he ain’t dead! He’ll be found—some day. He sure will, Mr. Dale.”
She helped me by her sturdy optimism.
Soon after this Wanza and I fell into the habit of tramping through the gleaming golden woods together almost daily, breathing the crisp sweet autumn air. Wanza in her bright sweater, with her tawny hair, and the carmine in her cheek flitted in and out of the wood paths like a forest dryad, exclaiming at every frost-touched leaf, and reveling in the painted glory about us.
“But the birds are gone,” she said, a tear in her tones, as we looked into an empty king-bird’s nest one day. “I love the king-birds—they’re sleek dandies—that’s what they are! Oh, Mr. Dale, what a heartache an empty nest gives me! The dear little birds are gone—”
“And Joey is not here,” I ended sadly.
After awhile I went on: “Yes, summer has gone. It is the most evanescent time of the year. It slips and slips away—and just as you grasp it and thrill to its sweetness it melts into—this—as happiness merges into sorrow.”
Her face quivered, and her eyes came to mine. “I guess that is so,” she said in a low tone.
Looking in Wanza’s face lately I always turned away. I did so now. The look of questioning I found there—the mute appeal—the suffering—these unmanned me. But it grew to be a strange satisfaction to be with her, through long crisp daylight hours, in the hush of pink sunsets, in the gilded autumn twilights, while we rested after a meagre supper cooked over a camp fire, chatting desultorily, and watching the big pale stars came out to lie like white-tipped marguerites on the purple bosom of the sky above our heads.
One day I spoke my thought.