“I know what a box is, and I guess I know a case when I see it, but you’ll have to tell me what a kickshaw is, Mr. Dale.”
I laughed heartily. And then Joey would have me recite Riley’s delicious little rhyme. The evening ended pleasantly for us all. But it left me with food for musing. Yes, I said to myself, Wanza was kind—she had ever been kind to Joey and me. Had I been too cavalier in my treatment of her? Remembering her sudden softening, her appreciation of my small gift, I decided this was so. In future, I assured myself, I would show her every consideration. Wanza was growing up. She was no child to be hectored, and bantered, cajoled and then neglected. No! My treatment of her must be uniformly courteous hereafter.
CHAPTER XII
IN SHOP AND DINGLE
IT seemed to me during the next few days that Wanza bloomed magically; as she worked she chirruped, her feet were light, a bird seemed to sing in her breast. I knew not to what to attribute the change. She was still the debonair girl, but she was wholly woman; and she was vital as a spirit, beautiful as a flower. We grew vastly companionable.
We walked together along the flowery riverways in the twilight; at night we watched the ribbons of clouds tangle into pearly folds across the moon’s face, and the stars grow bright in the purple urn of heaven. Mornings we climbed the heights and gathered wild strawberries for Haidee’s luncheon, and often in the late afternoon Wanza would come to the shop and I would help her with her studies.
It was pleasant, too, to take the glasses, and penetrate deep into the heart of the greenwood and sit immovable among the shrubbery, bird-spying, as Joey called it. It was Wanza’s delight to see me stand perfectly still in a certain spot near the shop, where a bed of fragrant old-fashioned pinks frequently absorbed my attention, and wait for the sparrows and nuthatches that often came to alight on my head. Inside my shop I was tending a young cedar waxwing that had dropped at my feet from a cherry tree near the cabin one morning. Joey had given the bird assiduous attention, and was overjoyed when a few days later he found it friendly enough to sit on his hand. We named the bird, Silly Cedar. And I made him a roomy cage of slender cedar sticks. He seldom inhabited the cage, however, choosing rather to flutter freely about the workshop.
Wanza’s joy in the birds was a pleasure to witness. I was at my work bench one morning, when chancing to glance through the open window I saw a charming picture. The girl stood by the bed of clove pinks, a veritable pink and white Dresden shepherdess in one of the stiffest, most immaculate of her cotton frocks, her hair an unbound, pale-flaming banner about her shoulders. On her head was poised a nuthatch.
It was the expression of her face that captivated me,—smiling, rapt, almost prayerful, as if invoking the spirit of all aerial things. Both arms were out as though she were balancing the dainty object that perched so delicately upon her head. In every fibre she appeared electrified, as though about to soar with the birds. Again I had that sensation of glimpsing beneath the girl’s casual self and finding a transfigured being.
The bird fluttered away as I gazed, Wanza stooped, gathering the flowers, and I went out to her.
She flirted the pinks beneath her chin as she looked up at me.