“Not much time, I’m afraid, Joey,” I responded, knowing that he expected a reply.
“Of course not. Come here, Silly Cedar,” he called softly to the Waxwing. He gave a musical whistling note, and the bird, that was perched on the work bench, flew to him and alighted on his outstretched hand. He made a picture that I was to remember in other sadder days, standing thus, holding the bird, scarce moving, so great was his ecstasy.
Very soon after this the chair reached completion. Upholstered in burlap and stuffed with moss, it stood in the small rustic pergola outside the cedar room, awaiting Haidee. Joey’s hassock rested beside it. And at last one day after I had worked myself into a state of fine frenzy at the delay I was told that she was sitting in state in the new chair awaiting me. I hurried to the Dingle, parted the underbrush, and stood gazing at my wonder woman before she was aware of my coming.
She sat leaning back in the big chair. She looked very weary and pale as she reclined there. The rough silk of her robe was blue—the rare blue sometimes seen in paintings of old Madonnas. Her lovely throat was bare. Her creamy hands with their pink-tinted nails lay idly clasped in her lap; and her feet, resting on Joey’s hassock, were shod in strange Oriental flat-heeled slippers with big drunken-looking rosettes on the toes.
“You are quite recovered?” I asked, stepping forward.
“Oh, Mr. Dale!” she cried, and seemed unable to proceed. And I found myself bending above her with both of her hands in mine, looking down into her shadowy, mysterious eyes.
I summoned my voice at last, and spoke rather indistinctly: “Joey and I have been awaiting your convalescence impatiently. Joey has been very anxious about his Bell Brandon, as he calls you.”
She still sat with her hands in mine, and she looked up at me with a strangely quiet gaze and replied gravely: “I like Joey’s name for me. Does he really call me that?”
“Why,” I said, “I have even ventured to call you so in mentioning you to Joey.”
I released her hands and seated myself on the steps below her. There was a silence. The sun slipped behind a cloud. The shadows in the Dingle deepened to invisible green velvet. In the perfume and hush I could hear my heart beat. It was very still. A cat-bird called from the thicket, the hum of bees buzzing among the clover in the meadow came to us with a sabbath sound.