The Shape of Fear [10]
it blowin' along near th' ground, like a big ribbon; an' sometimes it's th' color of air, an' sometimes it's silver an' gold, an' some- times, when a storm is comin', it's purple." "If you got so tired looking at the wind, why didn't you marry some other girl, Bart, instead of waiting for me?" Flora was more interested in the first part of Bart's speech than in the last. "Oh, come on!" protested Bart, and he picked her up in his arms and jumped her toward the ceiling of the low shack as if she were a little girl -- but then, to be sure, she wasn't much more. Of all the things Flora saw when the corn was cut down, nothing interested her so much as a low cottage, something like her own, which lay away in the distance. She could not guess how far it might be, because dis- tances are deceiving out there, where the alti- tude is high and the air is as clear as one of those mystic balls of glass in which the sallow mystics of India see the moving shadows of the future. She had not known there were neighbors so near, and she wondered for several days about them before she ventured to say any- thing to Bart on the subject. Indeed, for some reason which she did not attempt to ex- plain to herself, she felt shy about broaching the matter. Perhaps Bart did not want her to know the people. The thought came to her, as naughty thoughts will come, even to the best of persons, that some handsome young men might be "baching" it out there by themselves, and Bart didn't wish her to make their acquaintance. Bart had flattered her so much that she had actually begun to think herself beautiful, though as a matter of fact she was only a nice little girl with a lot of reddish-brown hair, and a bright pair of reddish-brown eyes in a white face. "Bart," she ventured one evening, as the sun, at its fiercest, rushed toward the great black hollow of the west, "who lives over there in that shack?" She turned away from the window where she had been looking at the incarnadined disk, and she thought she saw Bart turn pale. But then, her eyes were so blurred with the glory she had been gazing at, that she might easily have been mistaken. "I say, Bart, why don't you speak? If there's any one around to associate with, I should think you'd let me have the benefit of their company. It isn't as funny as you think, staying here alone days and days." "You ain't gettin' homesick, be you, sweet- heart?" cried Bart, putting his arms around her. "You ain't gettin' tired of my society, be yeh?" It took some time to answer this question in a satisfactory manner, but at length Flora was able to return to her original topic. "But the shack, Bart! Who lives there, anyway?" "I'm not acquainted with 'em," said Bart, sharply. "Ain't them biscuits done, Flora?" Then, of course, she grew obstinate. "Those biscuits will never be done, Bart, till I know about that house, and why you never spoke of it, and why nobody ever comes down the road from there. Some one lives there I know, for in the mornings and at night I see the smoke coming out of the chimney." "Do you now?" cried Bart, opening his eyes and looking at her with unfeigned inter- est. "Well, do you know, sometimes I've fancied I seen that too?" "Well, why not," cried Flora, in half anger. "Why shouldn't you?" "See here, Flora, take them biscuits out an' listen to me. There ain't no house there. Hello! I didn't know you'd go for to drop the biscuits. Wait, I'll help you pick 'em up. By cracky, they're hot, ain't they? What you puttin' a towel over 'em for? Well, you set down here on my knee, so. Now you look over at that there house. You see it, don't yeh? Well, it ain't there! No! I saw it the first week I was out here. I was jus' half dyin', thinkin' of you an' wonderin' why you didn't write. That was the time you was mad at me. So I rode over there one day -- lookin' up company, so t' speak -- and there wa'n't no house there. I spent all one Sunday lookin' for it. Then I spoke to Jim Geary about it. He laughed an' got a little white about th' gills, an' he said he guessed I'd have to look a good while before