Part 8 (1/2)

”Yes,” answered Virginia, going to the window, ”it does in August, though the twilights stay like this a long time. See, there's a star! Doesn't it twinkle? You can actually see the points! Let's wish on it. I wish--let me see--I wish for the loveliest year at St. Helen's we could possibly have--a year we'll remember all our lives!”

”I wish,” said Mary, ”that college may be just as lovely, and that I'll make as good new friends as you all are.”

”I wish,” said Priscilla thoughtfully, ”I wish I may be just as good a Senior Monitor as you were, Mary.”

”I'm not going to tell my wish,” said Vivian softly. ”It's--it's too much about me.”

Dishes were washed and dogs and chickens fed. Then they came out-of-doors in the ever-deepening stillness to watch the moon rise over the blue shadowy mountains, and look down upon the mesa, upon the horses feeding some rods away among the sagebrush, and upon them as they stood together a little distance from the cabin.

”Isn't it still?” whispered Vivian, holding Virginia's hand. ”You can just hear the silence in your ears. I believe it's louder than the creek!”

”I love it!” said Mary, unlocked doors all forgotten in a blessed, all-together feeling. ”See the stars come out one by one. You can almost see them opening the doors of Heaven before they look through. I never saw so many in all my life. And isn't the sky blue? It's never that way at home!”

”I can understand better than ever, Virginia,” said Priscilla, ”how you used to feel at school when we would open the French doors and go out on the porch. You said it wasn't satisfying someway. I thought I understood on the getting-acquainted trip, but now I know better than ever.”

”It makes you feel like whispering, doesn't it?” Vivian whispered again.

”It's all so big and we're so little. But it doesn't scare me so much now.”

”I've been thinking,” said Virginia softly, ”of Matthew Arnold's poem--the one on _Self-Dependence_, you know, Vivian, which we had in cla.s.s, and which Miss Wallace likes so much. Of course, he was on the sea when he thought of it, but so are we--on a prairie sea--and I'm sure the stars were never brighter, even there. I learned it because I think it expresses the way one feels out here. I used to feel little, too, Vivian, but I don't any more. I feel just as though some strange thing inside of me were trying to reach the stars. It's just as though all the little things that have bothered you were gone away--just as though you were ready to learn _real_ things from the stars and the silence and the mountains--learn how to be like them, I mean. You know what he said in the poem, Vivian--the stanza about the stars--the one Miss Wallace loves the best:

'Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amus.e.m.e.nt, sympathy.'”

Vivian sighed--a long, deep sigh that somehow drew them closer together.

”I don't believe I'll ever be like that,” she said. ”I'm afraid I'll always want sympathy and--love!”

”But it doesn't mean that, Vivian,” explained Virginia. ”I'm sure it doesn't. Of course, we all want those things--more than anything else in the world. But I think it means just as Miss Wallace said, that instead of demanding them we're to live so--so n.o.bly that they will come to us--unsought, you know. Doesn't that make it a little easier, don't you think?”

The August night grew cold, and soon they went indoors to a friends.h.i.+p fire in the stone fire-place. They watched the flames roar up the chimney, then crackle cheerily, and at last flicker away to little blue tongues, which died almost as soon as they were born. There was no other light in the cabin. Virginia had said that none was needed, and she did not notice the apprehensive glances which the other Vigilantes cast around the shadowy, half-lit room. At last Vivian yawned.

”Nine o'clock,” said Virginia. ”Bed-time! I guess we can see to undress by moonlight, can't we?”

”What shall we do about the door?” asked Mary hesitatingly. ”It won't lock, you know.”

”That won't matter,” said Virginia carelessly, while she covered the fire-brands with ashes. ”There's no one in the world around. Besides, Watch and King will take care of things. You don't feel afraid, do you?”

”Oh, no!” announced Priscilla, trying her best to ape Virginia's careless manner, and determined to _act_ like a good sport at least.

”Oh, no!” echoed Mary faintly.

Vivian was unspeakably glad that her lot had fallen with Virginia, and that their bed was in the farther corner of the living-room.

”I wish Dorothy were here!” Virginia called fifteen minutes later to the brave souls on the kitchen cot. ”Then 'twould be perfectly perfect.

Good-night, everybody. Sweet dreams!”

”Sweet dreams!” whispered Priscilla to Mary, while she clutched Mary's hand. ”I don't expect to have a dream to-night! Mary, don't go to sleep before I do! We'll have to manage it somehow! I'll die if you do!”

”I won't,” promised Mary.