I never doubted her afterward.
Sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the
whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy,
or she is gone on a journey, but she will come." And it was so:
she always did. At night she would not come if it was dark, for she
was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come.
I am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than I am; she was
born after I was. Many and many are the visits I have paid her;
she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is
mainly that.
TUESDAY.--All the morning I was at work improving the estate;
and I purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get
lonely and come. But he did not.
At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all
about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers,
those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the
sky and preserve it! I gathered them, and made them into wreaths
and garlands and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon
--apples, of course; then I sat in the shade and wished and waited.
But he did not come.
But no matter. Nothing would have come of it, for he does not
care for flowers. He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one
from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that. He does
not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care
for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for,
except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain,
and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering
the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along?
I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it
with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had,
and soon I got an awful fright.
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