Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Suddenly, in the midst of her pleasant agitation, her companion stopped beside a pile of lumber in a place where a house was torn down, and waved with his free hand to a comfortable seat on one end of a plank. They had reached the top of a gradual ascent, and from where they sat, hand-in-hand, she could look over Penitentiary Bottom and see the dark wings of pigeons in the burnished glow of the sunset.

"Let me see, how old are you, Jenny Blair?" Mr. Birdsong asked, with flattering interest, while he settled himself beside her on the pile of lumber.

"Going on ten. I'll be ten years old the twenty-first of September."

"You're old for your age, and you get better looking, too, every day. It won't surprise me if you grow up to be one of the prettiest girls in Queenborough. You have the eyes and hair of a wood-nymph, and when you have eyes and hair, it doesn't matter a bit if God has forgotten your nose and chin. You may take my word for it, I've seen many a beauty who had worse points than yours."

A beauty! She drew in her breath sharply, as if all her thoughts were whistling a tune. Never before had any one held out the faintest hope that she might grow up to be pretty. "Handsome is as handsome does," her mother had replied only yesterday to a charitable visitor, who had remarked in the child's presence that she was becoming more attractive in feature as she grew older. And now Mr. Birdsong (who was one of the most adorable persons she had ever seen) really and truly thought that she might be a beauty. With her enraptured gaze on his face, she nodded as vacantly as a doll, because she felt her heart would burst if she spoke a single word of the torrent of gratitude raging within her.

"So you're nine years old," he said very slowly, as if he were counting.

"Going on ten. I'm nine years and seven months and three weeks." She corrected him as patly as if she were reciting a lesson.

"Well, that's getting on. That's getting on in life."

"Yes, that's getting on," she assented switching one of her plaits over her shoulder and tying the bow of plaid ribbon. Down in Penitentiary Bottom the shadows were thickening. From beneath the fire-coloured sunset, rays of light were spreading like an open fan above a drift of violet-blue smoke.

"I should think," he continued gravely, "that nine years and seven months and three weeks would be old enough to keep a secret."

She looked round quickly, her pride touched. "Oh, I can keep secrets. I've always had to keep secrets of my own. You can't get far in this world," she added, repeating a phrase of Aunt Etta's, "if you tell everything that you know."

With a gay and tender laugh, he leaned over and patted her hand. "If you've found out that, you may go as far as you please. But how about this idea? Don't you think it would be more fun if we kept all this—I mean everything we've done this afternoon—a secret between us?"

What a surprise! What an adventure to fall back upon! "Do you mean everything?" she asked in a whisper of ecstasy. Never had she dreamed of having a secret that belonged to her and Mr. Birdsong and nobody else.

"Everything." His accent was so firm and grave that for an instant she wondered if she could have mistaken his meaning.

"The whole afternoon?" she inquired eagerly.

"The whole afternoon," he repeated even more firmly. "Everything that has happened from the minute you left Washington Street. It has just occurred to me," he explained, "that it would be great fun for us to have a secret between us."

"Oh, great fun!" she echoed.

"Of course," he said, looking more closely at the cut on her forehead, "you will have to tell your mother you had a fall. I suppose you could have a fall anywhere."

"Oh, anywhere." Then she glanced down uneasily. "But I've left my skates at Memoria's."

"You did, eh? Well; I'll bring them up to my yard. I'm going to drive down this way to-morrow, and I'll get your skates and leave them—Where shall I leave them?"

She thought a moment. "You might put them down by Old Mortality's pool. Are you sure," she asked abruptly, "that you aren't doing it all just to shield me? Mamma says Grandfather shields me too much."

"You needn't bother about that. But it's better not to tell your mother that you had a fall in Canal Street. It might make her feel worse, you know, and I've never found it did any good to make people feel worse. They usually feel bad enough as it is."

With this she was in earnest accord. "No, it never does any good. I always try not to tell Mamma anything I know will make her unhappy."

"You're a sensible child, and very grown up for your years, including the extra months. And it would certainly hurt your mother if you told her that you had run away and skated on that bad pavement. You might so easily have broken your bones."

"She'd feel dreadfully if she knew I'd gone because the children at school dared me. It upset her when she heard me tell Grandfather I wanted to see where the bad smell comes from."

"Well, she's right about that. You'd better keep away from that smell. But you're like me. You're too plucky ever to take a dare, or ever," he continued pointedly, "to tell a secret after you've crossed your heart."

"Oh, I wouldn't, not if—not if--"

"I know you wouldn't. That's why it will be such jolly fun having a secret between us. We must both be careful not to let anybody know that we've seen each other this afternoon. It would spoil everything if your mother should suspect."

"Oh, yes, that would spoil everything."

"If you let out so much as a hint of it, I'd feel, of course, that I could never trust you again. I'd feel, indeed, as if I couldn't trust anybody but Old Mortality."

Without a struggle, drugged with happiness, she yielded herself to his charm. Never had she imagined that a single afternoon (she called it evening in her mind) could be so filled with excitement.

"Then, that's a promise," he said, rising, and held out his hand.

"Yes, that's a promise."

"Cross my heart?" He illustrated the question.

"Cross my heart." She imitated the sign as perfectly as she could.

"Well, I knew you'd be the kind," he said in a caressing voice. "I always knew there was something plucky about you."

Intoxicated by his praise, she blushed over her thin little face and turned her eyes again to the sunset. Instead of moving on, as she had expected him to do, he sank back, still holding her hand, on the edge of the plank. Was it possible, she asked herself, for any one to feel happier than she felt sitting there on the pile of lumber, with Mr. Birdsong beside her? When her blushes had ceased tingling, her eyes wavered back to his face, and she thought what a nice and pleasant face it was when you looked at it closely. He must scrub very hard with soap to make his cheeks so fresh and clear and ruddy, and she was sure that Mammy Rhoda might brush all day long, but she could never, never bring that shining gloss to her plaits. In the paling glow she gazed up at his grey eyes, set well apart beneath eyebrows like dark edges of fur, at his straight, slightly aquiline nose, and his full red mouth, which curved outward beneath the faint shadow on his upper lip. Yes, she had never seen, not even in a picture book, a face she liked better.

"I try," she responded presently because it was the only thing she could think of that sounded serious enough for the occasion.

"Well, you do. It's a comfort to talk to you. The truth is, Jenny Blair, that I am not nearly so plucky as I should like to be. I don't seem able to hold fast to anything very long." He broke into a short laugh. "The trouble is, I was born with a roving nature."

Though she was saddened by the strain of melancholy in his voice and even in his laugh, she had reached at last, she felt, ground that was both firm and safe. "I'm afraid I was born with a roving nature too," she replied consolingly. What, indeed, but a roving nature could have taken her to Canal Street that evening, or have tempted her down to the place from which the bad smell sprang up?