Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/319

Rh I’ve never seen more than a little corner of it makes me feel as if I were chained. But I think if I had wings I should choose to be a house-swallow; and then, after I’d had my fill of wonders, I should come back to my familiar corner, and my house full of busy humdrum people, and fly low to warn them of rain, and wheel up high to show them it was good haying weather, and know what was going on in every room in the house, and every house in the village; and all the while I should be hugging my wonderful big secret—the secret of snow-plains and burning deserts, and coral islands and buried cities—and should put it all into my chatter under the eaves, that the people in the house were always too busy to stop and listen to—and when winter came I’m sure I should hate to leave them, even to go back to my great Brazilian forests full of orchids and monkeys!”

“But, Justine, in winter you could take care of the monkeys,” the practical Cicely suggested.

“Yes—and that would remind me of home!” Justine cried, swinging about to pinch the little girl’s chin.

She was in one of the buoyant moods when the spirit of life caught her in its grip, and shook and tossed her on its mighty waves as a sea—bird is tossed through the spray of ﬂying rollers. At such moments all the light and music of the world seemed distilled into her veins, and forced up in bubbles of laughter to her lips and [ 303 ]