Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 6

"I--I--"

"Gee!" he said, "you're a girl after my own heart!"

On the Elevated train the windows were lowered to the first inrush of spring, and when they left the city behind them came the first green smells of open field and bursting bud.

"Now are you sorry you came, little Miss Miriam?"

She bared her head to the rush of breeze and he held her hat on his lap.

"Well, I should say not!"

"No crowds, just everything to ourselves."

"M-m-m-m! Smells like lilacs."

"We'll pick some."

"I--I ought to be home."

"Forget it!"

"Now, Mr. Shap-iro!" But her eyes continued to laugh and the straight line of her mouth would quiver.

"Some eyes you've got, girlie! Some great big eyes! They nearly bowled me over when you opened the door for me last night. Let me see your eyes--what color are they, anyway?"

"Green."

They laughed without rhyme and without reason, and as if their hearts were distilling joy. Then for a time they rode without speech and with only the wind in their ears, and he watched the tendrils of her hair blowing this way and that.

"Just think," she said, finally, "we land in Naples just four weeks from to-day!"

"Hope the boat don't sail."

"You don't."

"Do!"

"If you aren't just the limit!"

"What'll I be doing while you're gallivanting round the country with some Italian count?"

"I should worry."

"I better put a bee in Izzy's ear, and maybe he'll put another in your father's, and the old gentleman will change his mind and won't go."

"Yes--he--will--not! When papa promises he sticks."

"Well, you don't know the nervy things I can do if I want. Nerve is my middle name."

"You sure are some nervy."

"'Cheer up!' I always say to myself when a firm closes the front door on me: 'Cheer up; there's always the back door and the fire-escape left.'

That's how I made my rep in s.h.i.+rtwaists--on nerve." He inclined to her slightly across the car-seat. "You wouldn't close the front door on me, would you, Miss Miriam?"

"Look, we get off here!"

"Would you?"

"N-no, silly."

Within the park new gra.s.s was soft as plush under their feet, and once away from the winding asphalt of the main driveway the bosky heart of a dell closed them in, and the green was suddenly dappled with shadow.

Here and there in the cool, damp spots violets lifted their heads and pale wood-anemones, spring's firstlings. They sat on a rock spread first with newspaper. Over their heads birds twitted.

"Somehow, here so far away and all I--I just can't get it in my head that I'm really going."

"I can't, neither."

"Naples--just think!"

"Ain't it funny, Miss Miriam, but with some girls when you meet them it's just like you had known them for always, and then again with others somehow a fellow never gets anywheres."

"That's the way with me. I take a fancy to a person or I don't."

"That's me every time. Once let me get to liking a person, and good night!"

"Me, too."

"Now take you, Miss Miriam. From the very minute last night when you opened that door for me, with your cheeks so pink and your eyes so big and bright, something just went--well, something just went sort of lickety-clap inside of me. You seen for yourself how I wanted to back out of going to the show with Izz?"

"Yes."

"It--it ain't many girls I'd want to stay home from a show for."

"Say, just listen to the birds. If I could trill like that I wouldn't have to take any lessons in Paris."

"You sing, Miss Miriam?"

"Oh, a little."

"Gee! you are a girl after my own heart! There's nothing gets me like a little girl with a voice."

"My teacher says I'm a dramatic soprano."

"When you going to sing for me, eh?"

"I'll sing for you some time alrighty."

"Soon?"

"Yes."