Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/172

 first contact with a problem only a few days younger than Eden itself. It came to his understanding, however, that if you mouth a helpless baby robin, a hand or a stick falls upon you hurtfully, even if you evade it for the moment and seclude yourself under a porch until it would seem that so trifling an occurrence must have been utterly forgotten. This was the one big sin—sin, to the best of our knowledge, being obedience to any natural desire, the satisfaction of which is unaccountably followed by pain.

I told him this would probably be all that he need ever know; and he looked up at me in a fashion he has, the silky brown ears falling either side of the white face. It is a look of languishing, melting adoration, and if I face him steadily, he must always turn away as if to avoid being overcome—as if the sight of beauty so great as mine could be borne full in the eyes only for the briefest of moments.

But Clem came now, ranging my breakfast dishes about the bowl of plum flowers, and I approached the table with all the ardor he could have wished at his softly spoken, "Yo' is suhved, Mahstah Majah."

The sight of Clem, however, inevitably suggests the person to whom I am indebted for his sustaining ministrations. Potts had been a necessary instrument in one of those complications which the gods devise among us human ephemera for their mild amusement on a day of ennui. And Potts, having served his purpose, had been neatly removed. I have said that the Potts-troubled waters of Little Arcady were for