As for odours, let other folk be proud of smelling musk and lavender,
but let him tell you by a quiver of the nostrils the various kinds of
so-called scentless flowers, and let him bend his ear and interpret
secrets that the universe is ever whispering to us who are pent in
partial deafness because, forsooth, we see.
He often paused to hear Lydia's low, soothing tones and the boy's
weak treble. Anthony had said to him once, "Miss Butterfield is very
beautiful, isn't she, Davy? You haven't painted me a picture of her
yet. How does she look?"
Davy was stricken at first with silent embarrassment. He was a
truthful child, but in this he could no more have told the whole
truth than he could have cut off his hand. He was knit to Lyddy by
every tie of gratitude and affection. He would sit for hours with
his expectant face pressed against the window-pane, and when he saw
her coming down the shady road he was filled with a sense of
impending comfort and joy.
"No," he said hesitatingly, "she isn't pretty, nunky, but she's sweet
and nice and dear. Everything on her shines, it's so clean; and when
she comes through the trees, with her white apron and her purple
calico dress, your heart jumps, because you know she's going to make
everything pleasant. Her hair has a pretty wave in it, and her hand
is soft on your forehead; and it's 'most worth while being sick just
to have her in the house."
Meanwhile, so truly is "praise our fructifying sun," Lydia bloomed
into a hundred hitherto unsuspected graces of mind and heart and
speech.
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