The Angel crowded beside him and was watching also.

“Doesn’t it look pretty?” she whispered.

“Do you suppose Heaven is any finer than that?” asked Freckles.

The Angel began to laugh.

“Do you want to be laughing harder than that?” queried Freckles.

“A laugh is always good,” said the Angel.  “A little more avoirdupois won’t hurt me.  Go ahead.”

“Well then,” said Freckles, “it’s only that I feel all over as if I belonged there.  I could wear fine clothes, and move over those floors, and hold me own against the best of them.”

“But where does my laugh come in?” demanded the Angel, as if she had been defrauded.

“And you ask me where the laugh comes in, looking me in the face after that,” marveled Freckles.

“I wouldn’t be so foolish as to laugh at such a manifest truth as that,” said the Angel.  “Anyone who knows you even half as well as I do, knows that you are never guilty of a discourtesy, and you move with twice the grace of any man here.  Why shouldn’t you feel as if you belonged where people are graceful and courteous?”

“On me soul!” said Freckles, “you are kind to be thinking it.  You are doubly kind to be saying it.”

The curtains parted and a woman came toward them.  Her silks and laces trailed across the polished floors.  The lights gleamed on her neck and arms, and flashed from rare jewels.  She was smiling brightly; and until she spoke, Freckles had not realized fully that it was his loved Bird Woman.

Noticing his bewilderment, she cried:  “Why, Freckles!  Don’t you know me in my war clothes?”

“I do in the uniform in which you fight the Limberlost,” said Freckles.

The Bird Woman laughed.  Then he told her why he had come, but she scarcely could believe him.  She could not say exactly when she would go, but she would make it as soon as possible, for she was most anxious for the study.

While they talked, the Angel was busy packing a box of sandwiches, cake, fruit, and flowers.  She gave him a last frosty glass, thanked him repeatedly for bringing news of new material; then Freckles went into the night.  He rode toward the Limberlost with his eyes on the stars.  Presently he removed his hat, hung it to his belt, and ruffled his hair to the sweep of the night wind.  He filled the air all the way with snatches of oratorios, gospel hymns, and dialect and coon songs, in a startlingly varied programme.  The one thing Freckles knew that he could do was to sing.  The Duncans heard him coming a mile up the corduroy and could not believe their senses.  Freckles unfastened the box from his belt, and gave Mrs. Duncan and the children all the eatables it contained, except one big piece of cake that he carried to the sweet-loving Duncan.  He put the flowers back in the box and set it among his books.  He did not say anything, but they understood it was not to be touched.