She bit her lip for joy and pride in him, even his strange, gay ways.
"Come, Vesta!" he said, with an air of natural and graceful proprietorship; "a stolen meeting is nonsense between you and me. I shall see you home."
II
"SETTIN' ON THE LOG"
His face invited me, the skin drawn over it rather tightly, resembling a death's-head, yet beaming with immortal joy.
He was sitting on a log; his little granddaughter, on the other side of him, was as cheerfully diverted in falling off of it. He was picking his teeth with some mysterious talisman of a bone, selected from the forepaw of a deer, and gazing at the heavens as at a fond familiar brother.
"Won't you set down a spa-ll," he said, and the way he said spell suggested pleasing epochs of rest.
"Leezur's my name; and neow I'll tell ye how ye can all'as remember it; it's jest like all them great discoveries, it's dreadful easy when it's once been thought on. Leezur—leezure—see? Leezure means takin' things moderate, ye know, kind o' settin' areound in the shank o' the evenin'—Leezur—lee-zure—see!"
Oh, how he beamed! The systems of Newton and Copernicus seemed dwarfed in comparison. I sat down on the log; the little girl, gazing at me in astonishment, fell off.