"Do you remember the great expeditions we used to have along the creek?" I said.
"Remember them? Why, David, I never could forget such days as those." She leaned forward, with her hands clasped in her lap, as though to bring herself into closer touch with the kindred spirit on the divan. "I often laugh over the time I caught the big turtle on my hook. You remember—we were on the bridge at the end of the meadow, and I thought I had captured a whale, and when I saw it I was so astonished that I went head-first into the water."
"And I dived after you," I cried excitedly, "into two feet of water and three feet of mud."
"And we both ran home soaking wet and covered with green slime," she went on rapidly. "Will you ever forget her look when mother——"
"Mother?" There was in my exclamation a note of surprise in which was almost lost the delight I felt in her use of that word.
She caught the surprise alone, and spoke now as though offended at what she thought my protest. "Yes, mother. Why, David, don't you remember I always called her mother? And she was the only mother I ever knew—even if only for a brief summer."
"I was glad, Penelope," I said. "Yet you surprised me just a little, because I feared that so much had come into your life you might have forgotten——"
"Forgotten?" she returned with a gesture of impatience. "You do not grant me much heart if you think I could ever forget those who took me in when I was homeless, the mother who tucked me into bed every night, who taught me the first prayer I ever uttered." She paused for a moment, and sat with her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. I, too, was silent. Suddenly she looked up. "You are right, David; I had forgotten. I was ungrateful, too; but seeing you again and talking with you has brought those days very near to me. When I have thought of your father and mother it was as though they lived in another world, as though, if I would, I could never see them, they were so far away." She leaned back in her chair and broke into a little laugh. "How foolish of me! Why, David, we shall go to see them—you and I and Uncle Rufus. We shall go very soon, David." Her slender figure was clear-cut in the firelight and a hand was held out to me in invitation.
Had the world been mine to give, how gladly would I have lost it for the right to answer her as she asked; to go with her and to walk by the creek to that deep sea of our childhood where she had caught the turtle; to ride with her again over the mountain road where we had careered so madly on the white mule; to sit with her on the humble back steps and watch the sun sink into the mountains, and listen to the sheep in the meadow, the night-hawk in the sky, the rustle of the wind in the trees—to the valley's lullaby. From this I was held by the vital fact still unrevealed. I folded my arms and looked at the floor, to shut from my eyes the idle vision of the days to which Penelope would lead me, to shut from them Penelope herself sitting very straight, with head high, so that I had fancied the blue bow tossing there.
"We'll go in May," she said with a sweep of a small hand, as though our great adventure were settled. "We will go when the orchards are in blossom, David. The valley is loveliest then."