Blue-Bird Weather

Absorbed, charmed by her quiet breathing, fascinated into immobility, he

sat there gazing at her, trying to reconcile the steadily strengthening

desire to know her with what he already knew of her--of this sleeping

stranger, this shabby child of a poor man, dressed in the boots and

shooting coat of that wretchedly poor man--his own superintendent, a

sick man whom he had never even seen.

What manner of man could her father be--this man Herold--to have a child

of this sort, this finely molded, fine-grained, delicate, exquisitely

made girl, lying asleep here in a wind-stirred blind, with the Creator's

own honest sun searching out and making triumphant a beauty such as his

wise and city-worn eyes had never encountered, even under the mercies of

softened candlelight.

An imbecile repetition of speech kept recurring and even stirring his

lips, "She'd make them all look like thirty cents." And he colored

painfully at the crudeness of his obsessing thoughts, angrily, after a

moment, shaking them from him.

A cartridge rolled from the shelf and splashed into the pit water; the

girl unclosed her gray eyes, met his gaze, smiled dreamily; then,

flushing a little, sat up straight.

"Fifteen widgeon went off when I returned to the blind," he said,

unsmiling.

"I beg your pardon. I am--I am terribly sorry," she stammered, with a

vivid blush of confusion.

But the first smile from her unclosing eyes had already done damage

enough; the blush merely disorganized a little more what was already

chaos in a young man's mind.

"Has--has anything else come in to the stools?" she asked timidly.

"No," he said, relenting.

But he was wrong. Something had come into the blind--a winged,

fluttering thing, out of the empyrean--and even Uncle Dudley had not

seen or heard it, and never a honk or a quack warned anybody, or

heralded the unseen coming of the winged thing.

Marche sat staring out across the water.

"I--am so very sorry," repeated the girl, in a low voice. "Are you

offended with me?"

He turned and looked at her, and spoke steadily enough: "Of course I'm

not. I was glad you had a nap. There has been nothing doing--except

those stupid widgeon--not a feather stirring."

"Then you are not angry with me?"

"Why, you absurd girl!" he said, laughing and stretching out one hand

to her.

Into her face flashed an exquisite smile; daintily she reached out and

dropped her hand into his. They exchanged a friendly shake, still

smiling.

"All the same," she said, "it was horrid of me. And I think I boasted to

you about my knowledge of a bayman's duties."