What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there, where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?

She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?

"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."

She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue against the sky that was green ... yes, it really was a pale, clear green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch right to the top with every color that could be.

"The lilacs will begin to swell soon," said Aunt Hetty.

"I saw some p.u.s.s.y-willows out, today," answered Elly.

The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them back, and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above them.

"It's quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden's is," said Aunt Hetty.

Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could live anywhere else.

"Well, good-bye," said Aunt Hetty. It did not occur to her to kiss the little girl. It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss. They squeezed their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went down the road, walking very carefully.

Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered? She felt as though she were carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something. And she mustn't let it spill. What was it so full of? Aunt Hetty's peacefulness, maybe.

Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight. That always made you feel as though something was being poured softly into you, that you mustn't spill. She was glad the side-road was so gra.s.s-grown. You could walk on it, so still, like this, and never make a sound.

She thought again of Father and wished he would come home. She _liked_ Father. He was solid. He was solid like that solid earth she liked so much to walk on. It was just such a comfort to feel him. Father was like the solid ground and Mother was like the floaty clouds. Why, yes, they were _every_ way like what she had been thinking about... . Father was the warm sun on the outside, and Mother was the cool wind on the inside.

Father was the end that was tied tight and firm so you _knew_ you couldn't lose it, and Mother was the end that streamed out like flags in the wind. But they weren't either of them like that slinky, swirly water, licking at you, in such a hurry to get on past you and get what it was scrambling to get, whatever that was.

Well, of all things! There was old Mr. Welles, coming towards her. _He_ must be out taking a walk too. How slowly he went! And kept looking up the way she and Aunt Hetty had, at the sky and the mountains. He was quite close now. Why ... why, he didn't know she was there. He had gone right by her and never even saw her and yet had been so close she could see his face plainly. He must have been looking very hard at the mountains. But it wasn't hard the way he was looking, it was soft. How soft his face had looked, almost quivery, almost... . But that was silly to think of ... almost as though he felt like crying. And yet all shining and quiet, too, as if he'd been in church.

Well, it _was_ a little bit like being in church, when you could see the twilight come down very slow like this, and settle on the tree-tops and then down through them towards you. You always felt as though it was going to do something to you when it got to you; something peaceful, like old Aunt Hetty.

She was at her own front path now, it was really almost dark. Mother was playing the piano. But not for either of the boys. It was grown-up music she was playing. Elly hesitated on the flagged stones. Maybe she was playing for Mr. Marsh again. She advanced slowly. Yes, there he was, sitting on the door-step, across the open door, leaning back his head, smoking, sometimes looking out at the sunset, and sometimes looking in towards the piano.

Elly made a wide circuit under the apple-trees, and went in the side-door. Toucle was only just setting the table. Elly would have plenty of time to get off her rubber boots, look up her old felt slippers, and put them on before supper time. Gracious! Her stockings were wet. She'd have to change them, too. She'd just stay upstairs till Mr. Marsh went away. She didn't feel to talk to him.

When out of her window she saw him step back across the gra.s.s to Mr.

Welles' house, Elly came downstairs at once. The light in the living-room made her blink, after all that outdoor twilight and the indoor darkness of her room upstairs.

Mother was still at the piano, her hands on the keys, but not playing.

At the sight of her, Elly's heart filled and brightened. Her busy, busy thoughts stopped for the first time that day. She felt as you do when you've been rowing a boat a long time and finally, almost where you want to go, you stop and let her slide in on her own movement, quiet and soft and smooth, and reach out your hand to take hold of the landing-place. Elly reached out her arm and put it around Mother's neck.

She stood perfectly quiet. There wasn't any need to be anything _but_ quiet now you'd got to where you were going.

She had been out on the rim of the wheel, all around and around it, and up and down the spokes. But now she was at the center where all the spokes ended.

She closed her eyes and laid her head on Mother's soft shoulder.

"Did you have a good walk, all by yourself, dear?" asked Mother.

"Oh yes, it was all right," said Elly.

"Your feet aren't wet, are they?"

"No," said Elly, "I took off my boots just as soon as I came in, and changed my stockings."

CHAPTER VI

THINGS TAKE THEIR COURSE

_A Couple of Hours from Mr. Welles' New Life_.

I

April 10.

One of the many things which surprised Mr. Welles was that he seemed to need less sleep than in the city. Long hours in bed had been one of the longed-for elements of the haven of rest which his retiring from the office was to be. Especially as he had dragged himself from bed to stop the relentless snarl of his alarm-clock, had he hoped for late morning sleeps in his new home, when he could wake up at seven, feel himself still heavy, unrefreshed, unready for the day, and turn on the pillow to take another dose of oblivion.

But here, after the first ten days of almost prostrate relaxation, he found himself waking even before the dawn, and lying awake in his bed, waiting almost impatiently for the light to come so that he could rise to another day. He learned all the sounds of the late night and early morning, and how they had different voices in the dark; the faint whisper of the maple-branches, the occasional stir and m.u.f.fled chirp of a bird, the hushed, secret murmur of the little brook which ran between his garden and the Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the Necronsett River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The Notch. He could almost tell, without opening his eyes, when the sky grew light over the Eagle Rocks, by the way the night voices lifted, and carried their sweet, muted notes up to a clearer, brighter singing.

When that change in the night-voices came, he sat up in bed, turning his face from the window, for he did not want any mere partial glimpse for his first contact with the day, and got into his clothes, moving cautiously not to waken Vincent, who always sat up till all hours and slept till ten. Down the stairs in his stocking-feet, his shoes in his hand; a pause in the living-room to thread and fasten shoe-laces; and then, his silly old heart beating fast, his hand on the door-k.n.o.b. The door slowly opened, and the garden, his own shining garden, offered itself to him anew, so fresh in the dew and the pale gold of the slanting morning sun-rays, that he was apt to swallow hard as he first stepped out into it and stood still, with bare head lifted, drawing one long breath after another.

He was seldom alone in those early hours, although the house slept profoundly behind him; a robin, the only bird whose name he was sure of, hopped heavily and vigorously about on the sparkling gra.s.s; a little brown bird of whose name he had not the slightest notion, but whose voice he knew very well by this time, poured out a continuous cascade of quick, high, eager notes from the top of the elm; a large toad squatted peaceably in the sun, the loose skin over its forehead throbbing rhythmically with the life in it; and over on the steps of the Crittendens' kitchen, the old Indian woman, as motionless as the toad, fixed her opaque black eyes on the rising sun, while something about her, he could never decide what, throbbed rhythmically with the life in her. Mr. Welles had never in all his life been so aware of the rising sun, had never so felt it like something in himself as on those mornings when he walked in his garden and glanced over at the old Indian.

Presently, the Crittenden house woke, so to speak, with one eye, and took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then, stepping around Toucle as though she were a tree or a rock, came his little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when he felt the child's rough, strong fingers slip into his.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Welles," said Paul.

"h.e.l.lo, Paul," said Mr. Welles.

"I thought sure I'd beat you to it for once, this morning," was what Paul invariably said first. "I can't seem to wake up as early as you and Toucle."

Then he would bring out his plan for that particular morning walk.

"Maybe we might have time to have me show you the back-road by Cousin Hetty's, and get back by the men's short-cut before breakfast, maybe?

Perhaps?"

"We could try it," admitted Mr. Welles, cautiously. It tickled him to answer Paul in his own prudent idiom. Then they set off, surrounded and encompa.s.sed by the circles of mad delight which Medor wove about them, rushing at them once in a while, in a spasm of adoration, to leap up and lick Paul's face.

Thus on one of these mornings in April, they were on the back-road to Cousin Hetty's, the right-hand side solemn and dark with tall pines, where the ground sloped up towards the Eagle Rocks; jungle-like with blackberry brambles and young pines on the left side where it had been lumbered some years ago. Paul pointed out proudly the thrifty growth of the new pines and explained it by showing the several large trees left standing at intervals down the slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father always has them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under six inches b.u.t.t diameter."

Mr. Welles had no more notion what cutting under six inches b.u.t.t diameter meant than he had of the name of the little brown bird who sang so sweetly in his elm; but Paul's voice and that of the nameless bird gave him the same pleasure. He tightened his hold of the tough, sinewy little fingers, and looked up through the glorious brown columns of the great pines towards where the sky-line showed, luminous, far up the slope.

"That's the top of the Eagle Rocks, where you see the sky," explained his small cicerone, seeing the direction of his eyes. "The Powerses lost a lot of sheep off over them, last year. A dog must ha' started running them down in the pasture. And you know what fools sheep are. Once they get scared they can't think of anything to do except just to keep a-running till something gets in their way. About half of the Powers flock just ran themselves off the top of the Rocks, although the dog had stopped chasing them, way down in the valley. There wasn't enough of them left, even to sell to the butcher in Ashley for mutton. Ralph Powers, he's about as old as I am, maybe a little bit older, well, his father had given him a ewe and two twin lambs for his own, and didn't they all three get killed that day! Ralph felt awful bad about it. He don't ever seem to have any luck, Ralph don't."