Cis laughed, a little shame-facedly as she made it clear to Nan where not only she, but anyone else who happened to want her might find her.
At half past one Cis, with a fringe on her garment’s edge, of small boys, and a few larger ones, went briskly swinging out toward the pretty country which surrounded the little city. They were bound on a four mile walk; they would end it, at the pace they were taking it, in something over an hour and a quarter. Cis ordered her troop to sing, herself leading the dubious chorus, sung in as many variations of key and tune as was possible to the number singing. The words held most of the time in place; even little flat-faced Jimmy Devlin, who sang on one note, situated in the depth of his diapraghm, kept valiantly to the time, so the tortured music held the feet to their task.
The glen was really pretty. It was damp and fragrant with the spring moisture and odors; with the delicious earth newly released from frost, the little shoots, the new growths of bark; somewhere out of sight were violets, and on the rocks saxifrage, clustering tiny white stars on an erect stem.
The boys’ delight was satisfying even to Cis, who passionately longed to put four hours and better of unadulterated joy into these meagre little lives. They went on a violent hunt for her hidden boxes of candy, unearthed them, every one, and willingly gave each boy who had been slower than the rest the share which he had failed to discover. They played games, yelling like mad, till, at last, they were ready to drop down on the platform put up for dancing, upon which Cis insisted as a seat because the high temperature of this summerlike April day had not had time to dry the wet ground. They subsided to munch candy and let her have her way with them.
Cis had carefully planned her story, and she told it well, the story of an imaginary little Roman boy, who might have lived, who dearly loved St. Sebastian. She told them how this brave young soldier and his little friend had died, for she made her fictitious little citizen of the City of the Catacombs share the fate of the older youth, whose story was true.
Then leaning toward the lads whose eyes were fixed upon her own, clasping her hands, her eager face flushed and earnest, her glorious red hair shining under a ray of sunshine until it seemed to illumine the shady glen, Cis begged her little adorers to hold fast to that for which Sebastian’s arrows had been faced, for which those little lads of old—and many since—had truly lived and gladly died.
Thus it was that Anselm Lancaster, coming down the glen from behind her, found Cis, and paused to wonder, with reverence added to the admiration he had already learned to feel for her.
One of the boys discovered him, and started up from his prone position, with a threatening gesture.
“Who’s de guy? Here, this is a private show; no buttin’ in!” he cried.
Anselm Lancaster laughed, and came forward as Cis leaped up and faced him, knowing at the first syllable of her indignant little guest’s protest, whom she should see.