Part 50 (1/2)

”I see!” said the Princess.

”'Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee Farmer boy a gay reply now whistles cheerily.'

”Then you whistle the chorus like you did it.”

”You do indeed!” said the Princess. ”Proceed!”

”'Then the farmer boy at noon, rests beneath the shade, Listening to the ceaseless tune that's thrilling through the glade.

Long and loud the harvest fly winds his bugle round, Long, and loud, and shrill, and high, he whistles back the sound.'”

”He does! He does indeed! I haven't a doubt about that!” cried the Princess. ”'Long, and loud, and shrill, and high,' he whistles over and over the sound, until it becomes maddening. Is that all of that melodious, entrancing production?”

”No, evening comes yet. The last verse goes this way:

”'When the busy day's employ, ends at dewy eve, Then the happy farmer boy, doth haste his work to leave, Trudging down the quiet lane, climbing o'er the hill, Whistling back the changeless wail, of plaintive whip-poor-will,'--

and then you do the chorus again, and if you know how well enough you whistle in, 'whip-poor-will,' 'til the birds will answer you. Laddie often makes them.”

”My life!” cried the Princess. ”Was that he doing those bird cries?

Why, I hunted, and hunted, and so did father. We'd never seen a whip-poor-will. Just fancy us!”

”If you'd only looked at Laddie,” I said.

”My patience!” cried the Princess. ”Looked at him! There was no place to look without seeing him. And that ear-splitting thing will ring in my head forever, I know.”

”Did he whistle it too high to suit you, Princess?”

”He was perfectly welcome to whistle as he chose,” she said, ”and also to plow with the carriage horses, and to bedeck them and himself with the modest, shrinking red tulip and yellow daffodil.”

Now any one knows that tulips and daffodils are NOT modest and shrinking. If any flowers just blaze and scream colour clear across a garden, they do. She was provoked, you could see that.

”Well, he only did it to please you,” I said. ”He didn't care anything about it. He never plowed that way before. But you said he mustn't plow at all, and he just had to plow, there was no escaping that, so he made it as fine and happy as possible to show you how nicely it could be done.”

”Greatly obliged, I'm sure!” cried the Princess. ”He showed me! He certainly did! And so he feels that there's 'no escaping' plowing, does he?”

Then I knew where I was. I'd have given every cent of mine in father's chest till, if mother had been in my place. Once, for a second, I thought I'd ask the Princess to go with me to the house, and let mother tell her how it was; but if she wouldn't go, and rode away, I felt I couldn't endure it, and anyway, she had said she was looking for me; so I gripped the s.h.i.+ngle, dug in my toes and went at her just as nearly like mother talked to her father as I could remember, and I'd been put through memory tests, and descriptive tests, nearly every night of my life, so I had most of it as straight as a string.

”Well, you see, he CAN'T escape it,” I said. ”He'd do anything in all this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no man CAN do.”

”I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,”

she said.

”A little time back, I didn't,” I answered. ”But since he took the carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU.”

”And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?” coaxed the Princess in her most wheedling tones.

”Not at all! He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.

The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is like this----”