Blue-Bird Weather

Blue-bird weather continued. Every day for a week Marche and Molly

Herold put out for Foam Island under summer skies, and with a soft wind

filling the sail; and in all the water-world there was no visible sign

of winter, save the dead reeds on muddy islands and the far and wintry

menace of the Atlantic crashing icily beyond the eastern dunes.

Few ducks and no geese or swans came to the blind. There was nothing

for them to do except to talk together or sit dozing in the sun. And,

imperceptibly, between them the elements of a pretty intimacy unfolded

like spring buds on unfamiliar branches; but what they might develop

into he did not know, and she had not even considered.

She had a quaint capacity for sleeping in the sunshine while he was away

on the island prowling hopefully after black ducks. And one morning,

when he returned to find her asleep at her post, a bunch of widgeon left

the stools right under her nose before he had a chance to shoot.

She did not awake. The sun fell warmly upon her, searching the

perfections of the childlike face and throat, gilding the palm of one

little, sun-tanned hand lying, partly open, on her knee. A spring-like

wind stirred a single strand of bright hair; lips slightly parted, she

lay there, face to the sky, and Marche thought that he had never looked

upon anything in all the world more pure and peaceful.

At noon the girl had not awakened. But something in John B. Marche had.

He looked in horrified surprise at the decoys, then looked at Molly

Herold; then he gazed in profound astonishment at Uncle Dudley, who made

a cryptic remark to the wife of his bosom, and then tipped upside down.

Marche examined the sky and water so carefully that he did not see them;

then, sideways, and with an increasing sensation of consternation, he

looked again at the sleeping girl.

His was not even a friendly gaze, now; there was more than dawning alarm

in it--an irritated curiosity which grew more intense as the seconds

throbbed out, absurdly timed by a most remarkable obligato from his

heart.

He gazed stonily upon this stranger into whose life he had drifted only

a week before, whose slumbers he felt that he was now unwarrantedly

invading with a mental presumption that scared him; and yet, as often as

he looked elsewhere, he looked back at her again, confused by the slowly

dawning recognition of a fascination which he was utterly powerless to

check or even control.

One thing was already certain; he wanted to know her, to learn from her

own lips intimately about herself, about her thoughts, her desires, her

tastes, her aspirations--even her slightest fancies.