"Uh-hmm."
"Well, I can fly up there right alongside him."
Grandma took off her spectacles to study the white soaring wings tipped with the last gold of the sun. "You can?" She smiled at him in pleased wonder. "Even without wings?"
Paul nodded, embarrassed, not knowing how to explain.
There was a strained silence. At last he spoke in a hushed voice, "Grandma, today in the theater I felt and knew things I never knew before."
Grandpa put an arm around Paul and another around Maureen. "I know jes' what he means, Idy. And I don't think no one—not their teacher, nor the postmaster, and mebbe not even Preacher Britton—could really put it to words. Idy, to those city kids in Richmond, today was like a fairy story come to life. It meant something real to 'em. And you'd of thought Misty and Stormy was borned actors, the way they played their parts." He sighed in deep satisfaction. "Fer oncet everything come out jes' 'zackly perfect. And fer oncet in my lifetime I'm too happy to eat."
Misty and Stormy seemed to feel the same way. Their kicking and cavorting done, they turned tail on their friends and walked down the meadowland toward their pine grove by the sea.
It was like the end of a play, their walking off, slow-footed and contented, side by side. Without benefit of words they were playing the last scene. It was good to be out under the big sky. And good to breathe in the fresh, clean air. And how cool the marshy turf felt to their feet. Home was a good place to be.
