Angel Island

"Oh, yes, Peachy," Lulu said, "Angela's wings must be a comfort to you.

You must live it all over again in her."

"I do!" answered Peachy. "I do." There was tremendous conviction in her

voice, as though she were defending herself from some silent accusation.

"But it isn't the same. It isn't. It can't be. Besides, I want to fly

with her."

The ripples in the cove grew to little waves, to big waves, to combers.

The women talked and the children played. Honey-Boy and Peterkin waded

out to their shoulders, dipped, and pretended to swim back. Angela flew

out to meet a wave bigger than the others, balanced on its crest. Wings

outspread, she fluttered back, descended when the crash came in a shower

of rainbow drops. She dipped and rose, her feathers dripping molten

silver, flew on to the advancing crest.

"Oh," Lulu sighed, "I do want a little girl. I threatened if this one

was a boy to drown it." "This one" proved to be a bundle lying on the

pine-needles at her side. The bundle stirred and emitted a querulous

protest. She picked it up and it proved to be a baby, just such another

sturdy little dark creature as Honey-Boy must have been. "Your mother

wouldn't exchange you for a million girls now," Lulu addressed him

fondly. "I pray every night, though, that the next one will be a girl."

"I want a girl, too," Clara remarked. "Well, we'll see next spring."

Clara had not been happy at the prospect of her first maternity, but she

was jubilant over her second.

"It will be nice for Angela, too," Peachy said, to have some little girl

to play with. Come, baby!" she called in a sudden access of tenderness.

Angela flew down from the tip of a billow, came fluttering and flying up

the beach. Once or twice, for no apparent reason, her wings fell dead,

sagged for a few moments; then her little pink, shell-like feet would

pad helplessly on the sand. Twice she dropped her pinions deliberately;

once to climb over a big root, once to mount a boulder that lay in her

path. "Don't walk, Angela!" Peachy called sharply at these times. "Fly!

Fly!" And obediently, Angela stopped, waited until the strength flowed

into her wings, started again. She reached the group of mothers, not by

direct flight, but a complicated method of curving, arching, dipping,

and circling. Peachy arose, balanced herself, caught her little daughter

in midair, kissed her. The women handed her from one to the other,

petting and caressing her.