Back and forth, here and there, erratic and swift and
sudden as lightning the theme played breathless. It fell.
"What is that?" gasped Orde, surprised to find himself tense, his
blood rioting, his soul stirred.
She ran to him to hide her face in his neck.
"Oh, it's you, you, you!" she cried.
He held her to him closely until her excitement had died.
"Do you think it is good to get quite so nervous, sweetheart?" he
asked gently, then. "Remember--"
"Oh, I do, I do!" she broke in earnestly. "Every moment of my
waking and sleeping hours I remember him. Always I keep his little
soul before me as a light on a shrine. But to-night--oh! to-night I
could laugh and shout aloud like the people in the Bible, with
clapping of hands." She snuggled herself close to Orde with a
little murmur of happiness. "I think of all the beautiful things,"
she whispered, "and of the noble things, and of the great things.
He is going to be sturdy, like his father; a wonderful boy, a boy
all of fire--"
"Like his mother," said Orde.
She smiled up at him. "I want him just like you, dear," she
pleaded.
XXVI
Three days later the jam of the drive reached the dam at Redding.
Orde took Carroll downtown in the buckboard.
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