“A restorer of the path of In-the-Spring,” I said.
Pelleas turned the glasses on the magnolias. “On my soul,” he exclaimed, “I thought I saw a tanager!” And when we had stood for a moment to watch hopefully and had been disappointed (“Why shouldn’t an early tanager come, to help us to believe?” he wondered), he gave a vital spark to what I had said about the path:—
“I suppose that that little path really has no ending,” he said; “you cannot end direction. Yes, the path of In-the-Spring must run right away to the end of the world.”
We walked on happily, counting the robins, listening to a near phœbe call to a far phœbe, watching two wrens pull slivers from a post for a nest they knew. Across the green, but too far away for certainty, we thought we saw a cherry bough in flower. .. .— ..... .⌒⌒ .—? we heard the grosbeak once again from somewhere invisible. The mornings on which we walk in the park seem to us almost like youth.
The augury that something pleasant was about to happen was further fulfilled when we came in sight of our house and saw Hobart Eddy’s great appalling French touring car like an elephant kneeling at our curb. Hobart was waiting for us in the drawing-room and he stood before us looking down from his splendid height and getting his own way from the first.
“Come, Aunt Etarre,” he said, “there is no car like her. I want you both to run over to Inglese to see Viola. You knew that she has come home?”
“Viola—has she really?” I cried; and, “Have you seen her?” asked Pelleas; and, “How does she look?” we demanded together.
“No,” Hobart said, “I’ve not seen her. I had a charming little note from her, full of nods. Now that I think of it,” he went on leisurely, “Viola’s charming little letters are always very like a bow from her. She never even waves her hand in them. She merely bows, in ink. I think I shall point out to her that if ever she is too busy to write letters she might send about her handkerchiefs, instead. One would tell quite as much as the other, and both suggest orris....”
“Hobart Eddy,” I begged impatiently, “where is Viola?”