"Of course. You're so hard to look at, it must have been painful to them to be nice to you,—almost like taking poison! Go on, Hezekiah!"
"You need n't interrupt me like that. Well, as part of the understanding, and Cecilia agreed to it,—she thought she had to for papa's sake,—she was to marry a particular man. Do you understand me, a particular man? Aunt Octavia gave her the little note-book—she bought it at a shop in Paris at the time Cecilia consented to the plan—and she was to keep a sort of diary, so that she'd know when the right man turned up. Now we will drop the note-book for a minute; only I'll say that Cecilia was to keep the book all to herself and not show it to any one, not even to Aunt Octavia, you know, until the right man had asked Cecilia to marry him. Now who do you suppose, Mr. Ames, that man is?"
I watched her hands as they deftly cut and fashioned the dry reeds. The air grew warm as the sun climbed to the zenith, and Hezekiah flung aside her coat. The breeze caught the ends of her tie and snapped them behind her. She was wholly absorbed in her task, and no boy could have managed a pocket-knife better. The first reed she made a trifle longer than her hand; the succeeding ones she trimmed to graduated lessening lengths, till seven in all had been cut, and then she notched them.
"Seven," she murmured, laying them neatly in order on her knee. "I remember the right number by a poem I read the other day in an old magazine."
She reached down and plucked several long leaves of tough grass with which she began to bind the reeds together, repeating,—
"Seven gold reeds grew tall and slim,
Close by the river's beaded brim.
"Syrnix the naiad flitted past:
Pan, the goat-hoofed, followed fast.
"It will be easier," said Hezekiah, "if you hold the pipes while I tie them."
I found this propinquity wholly agreeable. It was pleasant to sit on a log beside Hezekiah. It seemed no far cry to the storied Mediterranean and Pan and dryads and naiads, as Hezekiah bound her reeds to the music of couplets. There was no self-consciousness in her recitation; she seemed to be telling me of something that she had seen herself an hour ago.
"He spread his arms to clasp her there
Just as she vanished into air.