For three days Charles-Norton remained on earth sedulously. It was a
pleasant earth. They wandered together in the small area about the cabin;
they walked, swam, fished, picked flowers, and spent hours concocting, on
the fire before the cabin, nice little dishes which they negotiated
gourmandly, like children. On the second day Nicodemus, furry and fat
with idleness, was saddled, and they three went down the trail toward the
camp. Charles-Norton hid on the fringe of the forest while Dolly shopped
sagely in the general store, to the general approval of the somnolent
inhabitants who, by this time, had diminished to five; and then they
returned in the twilight, Nicodemus a bit wistful with the weight of the
many useful and good things within his bags. They worked about the cabin
the next day, and Dolly performed wonders with burlap and chintz.
Curtains draped the three small windows, a carpet spread upon the floor,
and on the big tree-trunk which, sawed off evenly in the center of the
cabin, served as a table, a shining lamp was set, promising of calm
evenings.
"We'll live here forever!" cried Charles-Norton, enthusiastically.
Dolly did not answer; her back was turned and she was busy tacking chintz
along one of the bunks.
On the fourth morning Charles-Norton felt a vague hunger which breakfast
did not satisfy. It was with him all day as he wandered on the ground,
the tips of his long wings stained with grass. It was with him stronger
the following morning; and after breakfast, he sprang suddenly into the
air. "Look!" he cried to Dolly.
And before her, above the meadow, he went through his flying repertory.
He cut clashing diagonals through the air; he rose and fell in
undulations like music; he shot about, gleaming white against the blue
sky; and finally he came down to her from the very zenith of the dome in
a sizzing straight line which opened, almost at her feet, in a white
explosion of suddenly extended wings.
"You baby!" said Dolly, as once more he stood before her, panting
slightly, and his eyes dilated; "you baby!" she said, indulgently.
Charles-Norton, shifting his position to one foot, scratched his head.
Somehow, this was not quite what he had expected. He had thought Dolly
more changed about this flying business; and here she seemed--well, not
so very much changed. Within him he felt something vaguely bristle. It
was still bristling there the next morning, and gave to his voice a
certain brusqueness when, kissing Dolly on the forehead after breakfast,
he said: "Well, so long, Dolly!"
"So long," he said; and Dolly, from her seat on the sward, saw him leap
from her and wing away in powerful flight. He made straight for the
crest; she saw him, flitting up there, a little white confetti in the
eddy of a breeze. Rising, falling, darting capriciously, he gradually
slid off down the range, and was gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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