The Madness of May Part 4

"Well, the circ.u.mstances being as they are, and being really a thief, you mustn't ask me to tell my real name; for all I know you may be a detective in disguise."

"I'm not--really," she said--he found her "reallys" increasingly enchanting.

"You might call me Friar Tuck or Little John. I'm travelling with Robin Hood, you remember."

"Mr. Tuck--that will be splendid!"

"And now that you know my name it's only fair to tell me yours."

"Pierrette," she answered.

"Not really!"

His unconscious imitation of her manner of uttering this phrase evoked another merry laugh.

"Yes, really," she answered.

"And you live somewhere, of course--not in the tree up there with your moon, but in the bungalow, I suppose."

"I live wherever I am; that's the fun of playing all the time," she replied evasively. "_Poste restante_, the Little Dipper. How do you like that?"

"But just now your true domicile is the bungalow?" he persisted.

"Oh, I've been stopping there for a few days, that's all. I haven't any home--not really," she added as though she found her homelessness the happiest of conditions. She snapped her fingers and recited:

"Wherever stars shine brightest, there my home shall be, In the murmuring forest or by the sounding sea, With overhead the green bough and underfoot the gra.s.s, Where only dreams and b.u.t.terflies ever dare to pa.s.s!"

"Is that Keats or Blake?" he ventured timidly.

"It's _me_, you goose! But it's only an imitation--why, Stevenson, of course, and pretty punk as you ought to know. Gracious!"

She jumped down from the wall, on the side toward the bungalow, and stared up at the tree she had embellished with her moon.

"The moon's gone out, and I've got to go _in_!"

"Please, before you go, when can I see you again?"

"Who knows!" she exclaimed unsympathetically; but she waited as though pondering the matter.

"But I must see you again!" he persisted.

"Oh, I shouldn't say that it was wholly essential to your happiness--or mine! I can't meet burglars--socially!"

"Burglars! But I'm not--" he cried protestingly.

She bent toward him with one hand extended pleadingly.

"Don't say it! Don't _say_ it! If you say you're _not_, you won't be any fun any more!"

"Well, then we'll say I am--a terrible freebooter--a bold, bad pirate,"

he growled. "Now, may I come?"

She mused a moment, then struck her hands together.

"Come to the bungalow breakfast; that's a fine idea!"

"And may I bring Hood?" he asked, leaning half-way across the wall in his anxiety to conclude the matter before she escaped. "He's my boss, you understand, and I'm afraid I can't shake him."

"Certainly; bring Mr. Hood. Breakfast at eight."

"And your home--your address--is there in the bungalow?"

"I've told you where my home is, in a verse I made up specially; and my address is care of the Little Dipper--there it is, up there in the sky, all nice and silvery."

His gaze followed the pointing of her finger. The Little Dipper, as an address for the use of mortals, struck him as rather remote. To his surprise she advanced to the wall, rested her hands upon it, and peered into his face.

"Isn't this perfectly killing?" she asked in a tone wholly different from that in which she had carried on her share of the colloquy.

He experienced an agreeable thrill as it flashed upon him that this was no child, but a young woman who, knowing the large world, had suddenly awakened to a consciousness that encounters with strange young men by starlight were not to be prolonged forever. In the luminous dusk he noted anew the delicate perfectness of her face, the fine brow about which her hair had tumbled from her late exertions. Her eyes searched his face with honest curiosity--for an instant only.

Then she stepped back, as though to mark a return to her original character, and answered her own question with an air of amused conviction:

"It _is_ perfectly killing!"

His hand fumbled the cap in his pocket.

"Here's something I found down yonder--your clown's cap."

She took it with a murmur of thanks, and darted away toward the bungalow.

He heard her light step on the veranda and then a door closed with a sharp bang.

Deering walked back to the inn with his head high and elation throbbing in his pulses. He observed groups of people playing bridge in the inn parlor, and he was filled with righteous contempt for them. The May air had changed his whole nature. He was not the William B. Deering who had meditated killing himself a few hours earlier. A new joy had entered into him; he was only afraid now that he might not live forever!

Hood slept tranquilly, his bed littered with the afternoon's New York papers which evidently he had been scissoring when he fell asleep.

Deering's att.i.tude toward the strange vagrant had changed since his meeting with Pierrette. Hood might be as mad as the traditional hatter, and yet there was something--indubitably something--about the man that set him apart from the common run of mortals.

Deering lay awake a long time rejoicing in his new life, and when he dreamed it was of balloon-like moons cruising lazily over woods and fields, pursued by innumerable Pierrettes in spotted trousers and pointed caps.

V

He awoke at seven, and looked in upon Hood, who lay sprawled upon his bed reading one of the battered volumes of Borrow he carried in his bag.

"Get your tub, son; I've had mine and came back to bed to let you have your sleep out. Marvellous man--Borrow. Spring's the time to read him.

We'll have some breakfast and go out and see what the merry old world has to offer."