Rhoda and Melsie chose a haycock against which to spread their blankets. Avery Bird and Banner Hope burrowed into another haycock. Edward, by himself, chose yet another. He arranged his blankets and then stepped back with his head on one side like an artist. There never was seen such an exquisite place to sleep in. In different parts of the field the others were singing, catching an infection of song one from another.
“Oh dig my grave both wide and deep ...” sang Edward hoarsely.
When he lay down the upright blades of hay moved in the breeze against the sky. There was one that was like a pen writing upon the sky.
“In an hour and a half I can say, ‘Today I shall see Emily,’” he said. But in an hour and a half he said nothing. He could hear an owl through his sleep, but he said nothing.
The line of sunlight, as Edward woke, was climbing down the opposite hillside as the sun fought its daily preliminary battle with the eastern mountains. On the near hillside, pine tree after pine tree flamed in the descending green light. When the woods that bordered the fields achieved their morning, shafts of gold dust slanted between the trees. There was a dark brilliant red in the shadows of the woods.
Cinders in hot cakes taste glorious under an early sun. Mrs. Ponting was sleepy and a little more kind than usual. She sat plaiting her hair and giving directions to the men while Rhoda efficiently cooked hot cakes. Edward, who had walked a very long way into the forest in search of wood, returned with half a dozen twigs and with news of a bear’s track which he had discovered in a patch of wet sand by a stream—the great print of the palm and three precise dents for the claws. The fire was so fierce under the frying pan that his characteristically poor contribution was devoured in it like a War-savings Stamp in the cost of the Great War. But he thought, “I can tell Emily I heard the bear crackling in the undergrowth. I might say I couldn’t swear to it and then it wouldn’t be a lie. Anyway she is a liar herself. But liars don’t necessarily approve of liars.”
They all sang during half the day. Along the road which followed the pale green foothills they sang; the squirrels, escaping to the embrace of mean and ragged foothill pines, clasped their hands upon their breasts in pious surprise as the loud song passed by to the kettledrum accompaniment of the Ford. The heads of gophers shot out of their holes and in again, till the slope bubbled with half-seen creatures in the sun, like boiling water. A snake oozed like quicksilver across the road.
Higher and higher. The steep slopes were heaped with dogwood and buck-eye and awakening azaleas. Mariposa lilies stood in the cool shadow. A couple of deer waded in the lilies. Sometimes a web of cloud-blue lilac was spun from tree to tree. The dark wine-colored Judas tree was nearly over.
The forest presently closed about the travellers. They were prisoners. The very passing miles held them closely prisoners. The trees were wrought steel bars between them and their sunlit and delirious cities. The noise of the car was beneath the notice of the silence. The silence of the forest was much louder than their voices or than the stuttering of hearts and engines.
Their eyes leapt absurdly and inevitably up the shafts of the trees. When the striped earth sloped the trees sprang at one angle from the slope like javelins thrown against one enemy, the sun. The sky seemed stabbed by the javelin trees. The high down-pointing cones were barbs, closely embedded in sky.