Like some older members of his sex,
he was discovering new witcheries about his divinity every day.
"Well, Be'trice!" He gave a long gasp of ecstasy. "I don't see how can
you do it? Can't I do it, Be'trice?"
"I'm afraid not, honey--you'd have to learn. There was a queer French
girl at school, who could do the strangest things, Dorman--like fairy
tales, almost. And she taught me to throw my voice different places, and
mimic sounds, when we should have been at our lessons. Listen, hon. This
is how a little lamb cries, when he is lost. . . . And this is what a
hungry kittie says, when she is away up in a tree, and is afraid to come
down.
Dorman danced all around his divinity, and forgot about the fish--until
Beatrice found it in her heart to regret her rash revelation of hitherto
undreamed-of powers of entertainment.
"Not another sound, Dorman," she declared at length, with the firmness
of despair. "No, I will not be a lost lamb another once. No, nor a
hungry kittie, either--nor a snake, or anything. If you are not going to
fish, I shall go straight back to the house."
Dorman sighed heavily, and permitted his divinity to fasten a small
grasshopper to his hook.
"We'll go a bit farther, dear, down under those great trees. And you
must not speak a word, remember, or the fish will all run away."
When she had settled him in a likely place, and the rapt patience of the
born angler had folded him close, she disposed herself comfortably in
the thick grass, her back against a tree, and took up the shuttle of
fancy to weave a wonderful daydream, as beautiful, intangible as the
lacy, summer clouds over her head.
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