My tongue was ineffectual to say what I would have said, and so I said nothing. The white of her face crimsoned as I held her hand. Her blue eyes said a thousand things I could not sense. But her lips merely murmured, “What is the swamp laurel for, Mr. Dale?”
“I want to make a design of laurel for a tray I intend to carve. You see, Wanza, I am beginning already to think of the holiday trade. At Christmas I shall send some of my work to the city to an art store there.”
We passed on to the workshop, and presently Joey joined us there.
“It seems to me, Mr. David,” he said as he entered, “that to-day is yesterday.”
I smiled at him appreciatively. I had come to call Joey my philosopher in knee breeches. He resumed, puffing out his cheeks in his characteristic way, “’Cause I been so busy. I guess if a body was busy enough there wouldn’t be no time.”
“We make our own limitations, Joey,” I said, bending over my cedar chest that was all but finished. “The Now is the principal thing, boy.”
“Mrs. Olds is the queerest lady,” he went on, “always watching the clock. An’ she don’t like our ways, Mr. David—she said so! She says we’re slip-shod. Hit and miss, she says, that’s the way we live. My, she’s funny! At night she says, ‘Well, I’m glad this day is over,’ an’ in the morning she says, ‘Dear me! I thought it would never come morning! I’m glad the night is gone.’ I said to her—I said to her—” Joey paused, having used up his breath, and requiring a fresh supply.
“Go slowly,” I advised. “What did you say, Joey? Get a good breath and tell Wanza and me.”
“I said: ‘How can you hate both times? It keeps you busy hating, don’t it?’ An’ if you’re busy hating, Mr. David, what time do you get to feed the birds, an’ watch the squirrels, an’ make burr baskets and cedar chests, an’ bow-guns and flutes?”
Joey put his head on one side and looked up at me inquiringly out of his bright shrewd eyes.