Part 31 (1/2)
”No--long before I became a fellow-slave with Clem--long before there was a juvenile mother or even a Clem in Little Arcady.”
”May I ask how you got it?”
”Certainly you may! I don't know.”
”May I see it?” I thought she felt a deeper interest than she cared to reveal.
”Unfortunately, no. If you only could see it, you would see that it is almost a perfect likeness--perhaps a bit more Little Miss than you could be now--but it's unmistakably true.”
”I lost such a picture once,” she said with a fall of her eyes. ”Where is the one you have?”
”Sometimes it's behind my eyes and sometimes it is out before them.”
”Nonsense!”
”To be sure! Only Jim and I, trained and hardened in the ways of belief, are equal to a feat of that sort.”
”I see no merit in believing that.”
”I don't know that there is, especially--not in believing this particular thing, but the power for belief in general which it implies--you see I am unprejudiced.”
”Why should you want to believe it?”
I should have known, without catching the glint of her eyes under the hat brim, that a Peavey spoke there.
”If you could see the thing once, you'd understand,” I said, an answer, of course, fit only for a Peavey.
”At all events, you'll not keep it long.” The words were Peavey enough, but the voice was rather curiously Lansdale.
”I have made as little effort to keep it as I did to acquire it,” I said, ”but it stays on, and I've a notion it will stay on as long as Jim and I are uncorrupted. But it shan't inconvenience you,” I added brightly, in time to forestall an imminent other ”Nonsense!”
Being thus neatly thwarted, she looked over my shoulder and bent to her oars, for we had again drifted toward the troubled waters of the dam.
”I warned you--if you listened to me,” I reminded her.
”Oh, I've not been listening--only thinking.”
”Of course, and you were disbelieving. It's high time you put us ash.o.r.e.
I want to believe, and I want not to be drowned. So does Jim,--_both_ of 'em.”
She pointed the boat to our landing, and as she leaned her narrow shoulders far back she shot me; one swift look. But I could see much farther into the water that floated us.
CHAPTER XXV
THE CASE OF FATTY BUDLOW
Lest Miss Katharine Lansdale seem unduly formidable, I should, perhaps, say that I appeared to be alone in finding her so. Little Arcadians of my own s.e.x younger than myself--and, if I may suggest it, less discerning--were not only not menaced, but she invited them with a cordiality in which the keenest eye among them could detect no flaw.
Miss Lansdale's mother had also pleased the masculine element of the town at her first progress through its pleasant streets. But Miss Caroline, despite many details of dress and manner that failed interestingly to corroborate the fact, was an old woman, and one whose way of life made her difficult of comprehension to the Little Country.