it was funny to watch his face.
"Which one said it?" he asked. "The little goldilocks in blue, or the one under the red parasol?"
I surely was astonished, for I had no idea that Richard was so observing. Heretofore, he had never seemed to notice how girls looked, or what they wore.
CHAPTER V
A PHOTOGRAPH AND SOME DAY-DREAMS
I don't believe compliments are good for the male mind. They go to their heads. Up to this time in all the years I've known Richard, I'd never seen him walk up to a mirror and deliberately stare at himself, except when we were having a face-making contest, and trying to see which could look the ugliest.
But the first thing he did after we went into the house was to stop in front of the hall mirror and square back his shoulders. Then he turned and looked at himself, a long, slow glance out of the corner of his eyes, and walked away with such a satisfied air that I was dying to laugh. All the rest of the evening he had a sort of set-up, lordly way about him that he had never had before. I am sure that it was the effect of Esther's compliment.
Barby asked him to stay to supper, and he did, to hear all about her Washington trip. He talked to her sort of over my head, as if I were a little girl who couldn't understand the great war measures which interested him. It amused me immensely, for every one knows that a girl of sixteen is far more mature than a boy of seventeen and a half. But I didn't say anything, just smiled to myself as I sat and knit and listened.
After supper when I brought out the oval frame to show the family what a bargain I got for a quarter, I had the surprise of my life. Tippy recognized the photograph in the frame. She said there were probably a dozen like it hanging up in various parlors in Wellfleet. It was the picture of a minister's wife she had known years ago. "Sister Wynne," everybody called her, whether they went to that church or not, because she was so widely beloved. The little boy's name was John.
When this little John was just a baby, Brother Wynne had a call to a big church out West. On the way there they came up to Provincetown to take the boat, and they stayed all night with Grandfather Huntingdon in this very house. Tippy was here on a visit at the time, and remembers it perfectly. Several years later the Wynnes had this picture taken to send back to friends in their old parish, and let them see how little John had grown. Miss Susan Triplett at Wellfleet has one.
It seems too strange for words to think that once upon a time they slept in our big downstairs guest chamber in the bed with the bird-o'-paradise valance and the pink silk tester, and that years and years afterward I should find their picture in a barrel at an auction, and bring it home and hang it up in that very room.
That's what I did after supper while Richard was drawing maps on the margin of the Boston Transcript, showing Barby where the Allies were entrenched. I washed the glass and drove a nail, and hung it up over a little serving table between the windows. Then I stepped back and held up the lamp to see the effect. It seemed to belong there, and the little fellow's big, serious eyes looked straight out at me, as if they were saying: "Yes, I know you, and I came back on purpose to be put into your story."
He seemed so real to me that as I went out, carrying the lamp, I looked back over my shoulder and whispered, "Good-night, little John Wynne."
Then I went upstairs to get another skein of yarn and wind it on Tippy's swift. All the time I was doing it I kept thinking of the events of the afternoon, and how beautiful Esther Gilfred looked – how adorable she was in every way. Those lines from Wordsworth came to my mind:
"She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight."
Also she suggested that line "Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls!" Suddenly I thought, why not write a poem to her my own self. At that, a whole list of lovely words went slipping through my mind like beads along a string: lily.. pearl.. snow-crystal.. amber.. blue-of-deep-waters.. blue-of-sapphire-skies.. heart of gold. She makes me think of such fair and shining things.
But it was hard to get started. After trying ever so long I concluded to look in the dictionary in the list of Christian names for the meaning of Esther. I thought that might suggest something which would do for a starter.
When I went back downstairs Richard had finished his map drawing. He was lying on the leather couch, as he so often does, his eyes closed, and his hands clasped under his head, listening to Barby play the piano. He certainly did look long, stretched out full length that way, longer than he had ever seemed before. Maybe Esther's calling my attention to him the way she did made me see him in a new light, for, after staring at him critically a moment, I had to admit that he really was as good-looking as she said he was.
I carried the big dictionary over to the library table and opened it under the reading lamp. Years ago we had looked up the meaning of our names, but I had forgotten what Richard meant until my eye chanced on the word, as I glanced down the page. I didn't want to interrupt the music, but I couldn't resist leaning towards him and saying in an undertone, just to get a rise out of him:
"Listen to this, 'Apollo,' the name Richard means 'strong like a ruler, or powerful.' That's why you have the 'shoulders of an athlete.'"
But he didn't even open his eyes. Just gave an indulgent sort of smile, in rather a bored, superior way that made me want to slap him. It was as much as to say that I was carrying coals to Newcastle in telling him that.
"Well," I said, in Tippy's own tone, quoting what she always tells me when anybody compliments me in her presence, "'There's nothing lasting you will find but the treasures of the mind.' So you needn't be so uppity, mister."
He ignored the remark so completely that I determined not to speak to him again all evening. But presently I was forced to on account of the interesting fact I found on the next page. It was too interesting not to be shared.
"Beauteous Being," I remarked in a half whisper, "don't trouble to open those gorgeous dark eyes, but listen to this. The name Esther means A Star. Isn't that wonderfully appropriate?"
His eyes flew open quickly enough at that. He turned over on his side and exclaimed in the most interested way:
"Say, I was just thinking what a peach she is, but somehow peach didn't seem the right word. But Star– that fits her right down to the ground."
And that from Richard, who never looks at girls! Seeing how interested he was in her I confided in him that I was trying to write a poem to her. That she seemed to be set to music in my thoughts, and that she continually reminded me of lines of poetry like that one of Tennyson's: "Shine out little head, running over with curls, to the flowers, and be their sun."
He asked me what that was in. When I told him "Maude," he turned over on his back again and shut his eyes, with no more to say. But when Barby finished the "Reverie" she was playing and he got up to go home, he walked over to the bookcase and began hunting along the shelves. He always helps himself to whatever he wants. When he slipped a book into his pocket I looked up in time to see that it was one of the little blue and gold volumes of our set of Tennyson. Later I found he had carried off the one with "Maude" in it. I have wondered since if he would have taken the same interest in Esther if I hadn't repeated her compliment – if it was that which started him.
Tippy lost no time next morning in hunting up the auctioneer and finding whose furniture he was selling, and all about it. What he told her sent her to Wellfleet on the noon train to talk over old times with her cousin Susan Triplett. She came back at supper time with a piece of news wonderfully interesting to me.
Little John Wynne is alive and really is back on the Cape.
