Of a sudden my hands grew cold, my tongue stiffened in my throat, and my eyes smarted. She was going. I had no power to detain her, no sophisticated words to cajole her. I stared after her, and saw her ride away through the swaying meadow-grass to the yew path, the sun dappling her blue riding skirt, and the breeze lifting and swaying her bonny tresses.
When I went indoors after a retrospective half hour beside the spring, I found Joey in the grip of intense excitement. The table in the front room was laid for three, there was a roaring fire in the kitchen stove, and Joey’s face was crimson as he stood on a stool at the sink turning the boiling water off a kettle of potatoes.
“I’ve made squatty biscuits like you showed me once,” he volunteered in a loud whisper, “and stewed apples. And, Mr. David—I’ve hung a clean towel over the wash-bench, and scoured the basin with rushes.”
I looked at Joey. Out in the woods I had undergone a savage battle with my old self that had walked out of the shadows and confronted me. I had remembered things—submerged, well-forgotten things; I had exhumed skeletons from their charnel house—skeletons long buried; I had seen faces I had no wish to see, heard voices, the music of whose tones I could not sustain with equanimity; I had suffered. But as I looked at Joey, the futile little friend who loved me, and saw his pitiful efforts to please, the ice went out of my heart, and the fever out of my brain. I turned aside to the window and stood looking out with tightening throat.
Joey came and hovered near my elbow.
“There are only two pieces of gingerbread, Mr. David. I’ve put them on, and you can just say you don’t believe in giving children sweets.”
I laid my arm across the lad’s shoulders. I looked down into the honest brown eyes seeking mine for approval. The pressure of the two small rough hands on my arm was comforting.
“You’re a splendid provider, Joey,” I cried. “But you may eat your gingerbread, my boy. There will be no guest. She has gone on to Hidden Lake.”
Joey looked aghast. His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew black with disappointment.
“And I’ve sweetened the apple sauce with white sugar, and gone and wasted all that butter in those biscuits!”