I was unused to this attitude in Joey, and one day I asked, “Don’t you like it, lad?”
A spray of the graceful spirea lay on my work bench. He picked it up, caressed it gently, and laid it aside.
“Oh, Mr. David,” he said, “I do think spirea, the pink kind, is the cunningest bush that grows!”
“I had reference to the box, Joey.”
His eyes met mine honestly. A flush crept up to his brow through the tan.
“I almost say Gracious Lord! every time I look at it, and you asked me not to say that any more, Mr. David. It must be ’most as beautiful as that fairy box you told me about one day, that the girl carried in her arms when the boatman poled her across that black river. I do think you’re most too good to me.”
I knew then that my boy liked the box beyond cavil.
But I reached the heart of his feeling with regard to the trifle the following day. As I bent over my work he said tentatively:
“I think we ought to do something for Wanza. She’s doing a lot for us, isn’t she, Mr. David?”
I glanced up. Joey was sitting cross-legged on my work bench, engaged in putting burrs together in the shape of a basket.