Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/127

Rh never seen reflected in the face of any girl before; perhaps it had been in others and escaped his notice, but, as he stood there watching Bobby go and listening to Helen's casual comment on the glory of the day, he was thinking this: That the face of Marcia Murray would never yield itself to a look like that.

He sat down beside her and drew lightly on his pipe. Against the far bank a trout was feeding, breaking the velvet surface of the pool by his frisky rises.

"So I'm not the only one who learns things from you," he said watching for the fish. She laughed disparagingly and said something about having little to teach. "Oh, no! Don't say that," he interrupted. "You have everything to teach children and—men. Do all boys who learn things from you want to marry you—when they've learned enough?"

She mistook his gravity for a form of banter and laughed in protest.

"Don't laugh," he said, and then leaning forward impulsively: "Maybe I'm not so different from other boys who learn things from you—and want to learn more so they—"

A flush rushed into her cheeks, the first he had seen there, the first time he had seen her unpoised; it startled him, and her brown eyes, very wide, fast on his, startled him also and for a moment they sat there, staring at one another while words surged upward to the man's lips—

And then a house wren, perched in a pine, tail at its pert angle, began his breathless spring song; the notes poured from his throat, fast and faster, liquid and mellow and infinitely lovely, and he twitched his tail and darted his small head and moved his feet on the branch as though