“Granny, while you are mixing the bread maybe I can find an egg in the loft. I heard Old Speck cackling.”
[pg 9] “There is grandpa calling, I will go and see what he wants.”
“He says, would you mind moving him a wee bit? His bones shore do ache.”
Here the dialogue ended, the girl’s attention having been caught by the voice of an old friend; except for which the valley had the quietude not alone of a warm mid-afternoon but of a great solitude, so profound that you might even fancy hearing the smoke curling up from the chimney of the cabin, a hundred yards away. Yet, if you listen you may hear the chirping of the grass creatures and the rippling water washing along the pebbly bed of the creek.
A lone tree, long dead, and bleached to bony whiteness, stands in the center of the old field and from its topmost snag a lark gives voice to a series of pensive, dreamy, flute-like notes. The girl, after listening for some time, resumes the dialogue.
“Children, we will climb on the fence and hear what Yellow Vest has to say. I think he is whistling to his wife, who hunts crickets in the broom sedge.”
“Maw, tell us what he says?”
“‘Love, thou art safe! art safe! I watch for thee! for thee! and babies.’ It is not so much what he says as the way in which he says it.”
The feeble voice of the old grandmother calls: “Jeanne, come help your granny;” and placing her dolls in their little beds of sticks, moss and bird feathers, and the little baby in its cradle, the half of a mussel shell, she goes to the house.
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