He was going barefoot, a boy still following the plow through the mountain fields. Miles and miles stretched away before him of dark, loamy land. He saw the plow tear up the waving furrows, tossing the earth in sprinkling lines. He heard the shrill note of the phœbe bird, and looking heavenward saw it darting into the pale sky.
“What a dandy shot!” he thought. “What a bully shot!”
Prince Poniotowsky had made a good shot....
Ah, there was the smell of the hayfields—no—violets that sweetly laid their petals on his lips and face. He was back again in church, lying prone before an altar. If she would only sing, he would rise again—that he knew—and her coral shoes would not dance over his grave.
He opened his eyes wide and looked into Letty Lane’s. She bent over him, crying.
“Sing,” he whispered.
She didn’t understand.
“Sodawater Fountain Girl—if you only knew how ... the flies buzzed, and how the droning was a living pain....”
She said to Ruggles: “He wants something so heartbreakingly—what can we do?” She saw his hands stir rhythmically on the counterpane—he didn’t look to her more than ten years old.... What a cruel thing—he was a boy just of age—a boy—