“Bosh and my poetry dreams are synonyms,” resumed Hester, her voice curiously mellowed from its accustomed sharpness. “Other people may say as much of theirs. I know it of mine. There’s the difference. All the same they are as sweet as the poisoned honey we were reading about the other day, which the bees make from poppy fields. And while I suck it, I forget. My romance has no more foundation than the story of the Prince and the Little White Cat. Mine is a broken-backed cat, but she comes straight in my dreams after her head is cut off. You don’t suppose she minded that! She must have been so impatient when the Prince hesitated that she was tempted to grab his sword and saw through her own neck. You see she recollected what she had been. The woman’s soul was cooped up in the cat’s skin. And I was eight years old when the evil spell was laid upon me!”
The tears in Hetty’s throat hindered response. Never until this instant, with all her love for her dependent charge, her knowledge of her sufferings, and the infinite pity these engendered, had the deprivations Hester’s affliction involved seemed so horribly, so atrociously cruel. The listener’s nails dug furrows in her palms, she set her teeth, and looking up to the unfeeling smile of the deaf and dumb heavens, she said something in her heart that would have left faint hope of her eternal weal in the orthodox mind of her brother-in-law.
“Every painter has his models. I have had mine. I dress each one up and work the wires to make him or her go through the motions—my motions, mind you! not theirs, poor puppets! When the dress gets shabby, or the limbs rickety, I throw them upon the rubbish heap, and look out for another.
“I got a new one last Thursday. The man who jumped over me in the station, and afterward carried me into the restaurant (such strong, steady arms as he had!) is a real hero! Oh, I am building a noble castle to put him in! He lives near here, for he passes the house three times a day. His eyes have a smile in them, and his mustache droops just like Charles I.’s, and he walks with a spring as if he were so full of life he longed to leap or fly, and his voice has a ring and resonance like an organ. The pretty girl that called him ‘Mark’ to-day, is his sister.”
“Why not his wife?”
“Wife! Don’t you suppose I know the cut of a married man, even on the street? He hasn’t the first symptom of the craft. He doesn’t swagger, and he doesn’t slink. A husband does one or the other.”
Hetty laughed out merrily. There was a sense of relief in Hester’s return to the sarcastic raillery habitual to her, which made her mirth the heartier.
A man crossing the lower slope of the orchard heard the bubbling peal, and looked in the direction of the big tree. So did his attendant, a huge St. Bernard dog. He tore up the acclivity, bellowing ferociously. Before his master’s shout arose above his baying he was almost upon the girls. At the instant of alarm, Hetty had thrown herself before the wheeled chair and the helpless occupant, and faced the foe. Crouching slightly, as for a spring, her face blenched, eyes wide and steady, she stood in the rosy shadow of the branches, both hands outthrown to ward off the bounding assailant.
“What a pose!” was March’s first thought, professional instinct asserting itself, concerned though he was at the panic for which he was responsible. In the same lightning flash came—“I’ll paint that girl some day!”