“It’s a damn lie.  I don’t believe it!”

CHAPTER IV

The long wet season had drawn near its close.  Signs of spring were visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents.  The pine forests exhaled the fresher spicery.  The azaleas were already budding, the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.  On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells.  Again the billow above Smith’s grave was soft and green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.  The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they reached Smith’s grave, and there there was but one.  General superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and “screaming farces”; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc.  These announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the master’s scholars.  The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the master and Mliss “assisted.”

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.  But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her excitable nature.  The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of her panting little heart.  Her small passionate lips were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried breath.  Her widely opened lids threw up and arched her black eyebrows.  She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed.  Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-hearted “Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller” and ogling the master at the same moment.  But when the performance was over, and the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep breath, and turned to the master’s grave face with a half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture.  Then she said, “Now take me home!” and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more in fancy on the mimic stage.