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III
Had Mrs. Mobry`s intention been that Sigmund should fall in love with her daughter she could not have designed a plan more Machiavellian than the one she employed. But her only thought had been a caution against marriage. Thus there was no cause to grumble, for she had done her work well and surely.
This caution served Sigmund as his only shield- poor fool; all others, he set aside at once. It was more than a shield. It was a license, drawn, signed, stamped and delivered to his conscience, which permitted him to live at Naomi`s side with his young nature all unbridled to wound itself after the manner of young unbridled natures.
They lived such a joyous life during those spring and summer days, and did so many things that were delightful! For must it not have been a delight to rise when the morning was yet gray, and to tramp- high-booted both of them- through the brush of the hillside, crisp and silvered with dew? To silently wait with ready rifle for the young covey to start with sudden whirr from the fence corners? To watch the east begin to fire and set the wet earth sparkling?
But perhaps they liked it better, or certainly as well, when they sat side by side in Naomi`s wagonette and went jogging to town, three miles away, behind the fat, lazy pony who always wanted to stop and drink when they crossed the shallow ford of the Meramec, where the water ran like liquid crystal over the shining pebbles beneath. He always wanted to stop, too, and rest under the branches of the big walnut tree that marked the limit of the Mobry`s field. It was a whim of Naomi`s to let her pony do what he wanted to, and as often as not he wanted to nibble the grass that grew tender along the edges of the road.
It is no wonder then that their little jogs to town consumed an incredible length of time. Yet what had they to do with time but to waste it? And this they did from morning till night. Sometimes upon the river that twines like a silver ribbon through the green slopes of Southern Missouri, seated in Naomi`s slender boat, they floated in midstream when the stars or moon were over them. They skirted the banks, gliding under the shade of hanging willows when the sun grew hot and lurid, as it did often when the summer days came.
Then Sigmund`s blue eyes saw nothing in all the world so good to look upon as Naomi`s brown ones, that filled with wonder at the sweet trouble which stirred her when she caught his gaze and answered it.
There was much reading in books, too, during that summer time. There are many things in books beside isms and ologies. The world has always its poets who sing. And, strangely enough, Sigmund could think of no training so fit for Naomi`s untrammelled thought as to follow Lancelot in his loves or Juliet in her hot despair. And Naomi often sighed over such tales, and wept sometimes, for Sigmund told them from his heart, and they seemed very real.
Mrs. Mobry`s first care- and John Mobry`s, too, for that matter- was always Naomi`s health; then, Naomi`s happiness. These had been from babyhood so fixed and well established that the mother could surely have been forgiven had she permitted her solicitude to wane sometimes. But this she never did. The color must be always there in Naomi`s cheek, or she must know why it was not. When the girl grew languid and dreamy- the summer being hot- the mother must know why it was so.
"I`m sure I don`t know, mamma. This heavy heat would make anyone`s blood run a little sluggishly, I think."
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