Blue-Bird Weather

"Has the shooting been pretty good?" he asked pleasantly, plying knife and fork in the service of a raging appetite.

"It has been."

"What do you think of the prospects for to-morrow?"

She said gravely: "I am afraid it will be blue-bird weather."

It was a new, but graphic, expression to him; and he often remembered it afterward, and how quaintly it fell from her lips as she stood there in the light of the kerosene lamp, slim, self-possessed, in her faded gingham gown and apron, the shapely middle finger of one little weather-tanned hand resting on the edge of the cloth.

"You are Miss Herold, I suppose?" he said, looking up at her with his pleasant smile.

"Yes."

"You are not Southern?"

"No," she said briefly. And he then remembered that the Hon. Cicero W. Gilkins, when he was president of the now defunct club, had installed a Northern man as resident chief game-protector and superintendent at the Foam Island Club House.

Marche had never even seen Herold; but, through lack of personal interest, and also because he needed somebody to look out for the property, he had continued to pay this man Herold his inconsiderable salary every year, scarcely knowing, himself, why he did not put the Foam Island shooting on the market and close up the matter for good.

"It's been five years since I was here, Miss Herold," he said, smiling. "That was in the old days of the club, when Judge Gilkins and Colonel Vyse used to come here shooting every season. But you don't remember them, I fancy."

"I remember them."

"Really! You must have been quite a child."

"I was thirteen."

"Oh, then you are eighteen, now," he said humorously.

Her grave, young lips were only slightly responsive to his smile.

"You have been here a long time," he said. "Do you find it lonely?"

"Sometimes," she admitted.

"What do you do for recreation?"

"I don't think I know what you mean, Mr. Marche."

"I mean for pleasure."

She looked at him out of her clear, gray eyes, then turned her gaze on the window. But she could not see through it; the pane only reflected her face darkly; and to her, for a moment, it seemed that way with her whole pent-up life, here in the Virginia marshes—no outlet, no outlook, and wherever she turned her wistful eyes only her own imprisoned self to confront her out of the dull obscurity.

"I suppose," he said, watching her, "that you sometimes go to Norfolk for a holiday?"

"No."

"Or to Old Point, or Baltimore, perhaps?"

She had her under lip between her teeth, now, and was looking so fixedly at the window that he thought she had not heard him.

He rose from the table, and as she turned to meet his pleasant eyes he smilingly thanked her for waiting on him.

"And now," he said, "if you will say to your father that I'd like to have a little talk with him–"

"Father is ill in bed," she said, in a low voice.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I hope it isn't anything serious."

"I—think not."

"Will he be able to see me to-morrow?"

"I am afraid not, Mr. Marche. He—he asked me to say to you that you might safely transact any business with me. I know all about it," she said, speaking a little hurriedly. "I keep the accounts, and I have every item and every bill ready for your inspection; and I can tell you exactly what condition the property is in and what lumber has been cut and what repairs have been necessary. Whenever you are ready for me, I will come into the sitting room," she added, "because Jim and I have had our supper."

"Very well," he said, smiling, "I am ready now, if you are."

So she went away to rinse her hands and lay aside her apron, and in a few minutes she entered the sitting room. He rose and placed a chair for her, and she thanked him, flushing a little, and then he resumed his seat, watching her sorting over the papers in her lap.

Presently she crossed one knee over the other, and one slim, prettily shaped foot, in its shabby shoe, swung clear of its shadow on the floor. Then she handed him a sheaf of bills for his inspection, and, pencil in hand, followed the totals as he read them off aloud.

For half an hour they compared and checked off items, and he found her accounts accurate to a penny.

"Father bought three geese and a gander from Ike Helm," she said. "They were rather expensive, but two were mated, and they call very well when tied out separated. Do you think it was too expensive?" she added timidly, showing him the bill.

"No," he said, smiling. "I think it's all right. Mated decoys are what we need, and you can wing-tip a dozen before you get one that will talk at the right time."

"That is true," she said eagerly. "We try our best to keep up the decoys and have nothing but talkers. Our geese are nearly all right, and our ducks are good, but our swans are so vexing! They seem to be such fools, and they usually behave like silly cygnets. You will see to-morrow."

While she was speaking, her brother came quietly into the room with an open book in his hands, and Marche, glancing at it curiously, saw that it was a Latin grammar.

"Where do you go to school, Jim?" he asked.

"Father teaches me."

Marche, rather astonished at the calibre of his superintendent, glanced from the boy to his sister in silence. The girl's head remained steadily lowered over the papers on her knee, but he saw her foot swinging in nervous rhythm, and he was conscious of her silent impatience at something or other, perhaps at the interruption in their business discussion.

"Well," he said pleasantly, "what comes next, Miss Herold?"

She handed him a list of the decoys. He read it gravely, nodded, and returned it.

"You may count them for yourself to-morrow," she said.

"Not at all. I trust you entirely," he replied laughingly.

Then they went over the remaining matters, the condition of the pine timber, the repairs to the boats and blinds and stools, items for snaps, swivels, paint, cement, wire, none of which interested Marche as much as the silent boy reading his Latin grammar by the smoky lamp interested him, or the boy's sister bending over the papers on her knee, pencil poised in her pretty, weather-roughened hand.

"I sent the shells from New York by express," he said. "Did they arrive?"