Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/144

 "Too nice to work today," he said companionably, clasping hands behind his head.

They floated on wavelets of migrant thoughts.

Lucy rolled over, raised herself on her elbow, and looked at Clem. Another disturbing characteristic, he thought, she always looks at you directly when she speaks.

"Do you know a lot of people in New York?"

"Some, why?"

"I just wondered."

A ripple of a breeze, lost in wandering, stirred a twinkle of leaves and withdrew to the prairie, while millions of insects obliviously pursued oblivion. Lethargy overcame him. If only one could rest thus and the senses that swirl could unite to evolve that image so real to feel but so intangible to put down. He scarcely noted her soft silky movement.

Down a path in cavernous shade Lucy leaned against the trunk of an oak and put her arms around it. Her fingers sought the furrows of its rough black corrugations. The woods were heady with the same acrid earthiness of the hepaticas. Trees were like what men ought to be. Mysterious, unyielding, not beggars. Of course, men were stronger than girls, and one of these days if she wasn't careful a man would control her for that final moment they all wanted so much. Pressing her lips against the bark she felt herself respond to its ancient power.

My goodness, I guess I'm getting to be a regular old maid, I haven't let anyone kiss me for over a month. A jack-in-the-pulpit watched her scuff thoughtfully back through the humus to where Clem lay. He knew she was near and kept his eyes closed to prolong his thought of how he would awaken her with more than a kiss were she in his place. Why was she so young?

She knelt softly and bent over to look at his smooth relaxed lips. Her body's perfume penetrated his nostrils, arousing him again, but he held his breath not to frighten her away. He felt her fingers plant themselves in his beard, and then her firm drawing lips drew his. For a long moment he yielded and then reached up and. somersaulted her over his breast where she lay laughing her high mocking laugh, a trill which extracted indignant cheeps from nesting birds.

"You are a naughty girl," he said severely, holding her wrists in vise-grasp self-protection. He couldn't, she was too young. 132