第22章 DANIEL AND LITTLE DAN'L(3)

"Lord, no! Your Uncle Dan'l won't let any bats come within a gun-shot."The little creature settled down contentedly in the old man's lap. Her fair, thin locks fell over his shirt-sleeved arm, her upturned profile was sweetly pure and clear even in the dusk. She was so deli-cately small that he might have been holding a fairy, from the slight roundness of the childish limbs and figure. Poor little girl! -- Dan'1 was much too small and thin. Old man Daniel gazed down at her anxiously.

"Jest as soon as the nice fall weather comes,"said he, "uncle is going to take you down to the village real often, and you can get acquainted with some other nice little girls and play with them, and that will do uncle's little Dan'l good.""I saw little Lucy Rose," piped the child, "and she looked at me real pleasant, and Lily Jennings wore a pretty dress. Would they play with me, uncle?""Of course they would. You don't feel quite so hot, here, do you?""I wasn't so hot, anyway; I was afeard of bats.""There ain't any bats here."

"And skeeters."

"Uncle don't believe there's any skeeters, neither.""I don't hear any sing," agreed little Dan'l in a weak voice. Very soon she was fast asleep. The old man sat holding her, and loving her with a simple crystalline intensity which was fairly heavenly. He himself almost disregarded the heat, being raised above it by sheer exaltation of spirit. All the love which had lain latent in his heart leaped to life be-fore the helplessness of this little child in his arms.

He realized himself as much greater and of more importance upon the face of the earth than he had ever been before. He became paternity incarnate and superblessed. It was a long time before he car-ried the little child back to her room and laid her, still as inert with sleep as a lily, upon her bed. He bent over her with a curious waving motion of his old shoulders as if they bore wings of love and pro-tection; then he crept back down-stairs.

On nights like that he did not go to bed. All the bedrooms were under the slant of the roof and were hot. He preferred to sit until dawn beside his open window, and doze when he could, and wait with despairing patience for the infrequent puffs of cool air breathing blessedly of wet swamp places, which, even when the burning sun arose, would only show dewy eyes of cool reflection. Daniel Wise, as he sat there through the sultry night, even prayed for courage, as a devout sentinel might have prayed at his post. The imagination of the deserter was not in the man. He never even dreamed of appro-priating to his own needs any portion of his savings, and going for a brief respite to the deep shadows of mountainous places, or to a cool coast, where the great waves broke in foam upon the sand, breathing out the mighty saving breath of the sea. It never occurred to him that he could do anything but re-main at his post and suffer in body and soul and mind, and not complain.

The next morning was terrible. The summer had been one of unusually fervid heat, but that one day was its climax. David went panting up-stairs to his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to know that he had sat up all night. He opened his bed, tidily, as was his wont. Through living alone he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in the kitchen.

"It is a dreadful hot day," said she as Daniel approached the sink to wash his face and hands.

"It does seem a little warm," admitted Daniel, with his studied air of politeness with respect to the weather as an ordinance of God.

"Warm!" echoed Sarah Dean. Her thin face blazed a scarlet wedge between the sleek curtains of her dank hair; perspiration stood on her triangle of forehead. "It is the hottest day I ever knew!"she said, defiantly, and there was open rebellion in her tone.

"It IS sort of warmish, I rather guess," said Daniel.

After breakfast, old Daniel announced his in-tention of taking little Dan'l out for a walk.

At that Sarah Dean fairly exploded. "Be you gone clean daft, Dan'l?" said she. "Don't you know that it actually ain't safe to take out such a delicate little thing as that on such a day?""Dr. Trumbull said to take her outdoors for a walk every day, rain or shine," returned Daniel, obstinately.

"But Dr. Trumbull didn't say to take her out if it rained fire and brimstone, I suppose," said Sarah Dean, viciously.

Daniel looked at her with mild astonishment.

"It is as much as that child's life is worth to take her out such a day as this," declared Sarah, viciously.

"Dr. Trumbull said to take no account of the weather," said Daniel with stubborn patience, "and we will walk on the shady side of the road, and go to Bradley's Brook. It's always a little cool there.""If she faints away before you get there, you bring her right home," said Sarah. She was almost ferocious. "Just because YOU don't feel the heat, to take out that little pindlin' girl such a day!" she exclaimed.

"Dr. Trumbull said to," persisted Daniel, al-though he looked a little troubled. Sarah Dean did not dream that, for himself, Daniel Wise would have preferred facing an army with banners to going out under that terrible fusillade of sun-rays. She did not dream of the actual heroism which actuated him when he set out with little Dan'l, holding his big umbrella over her little sunbonneted head and waving in his other hand a palm-leaf fan.

Little Dan'l danced with glee as she went out of the yard. The small, anemic creature did not feel the heat except as a stimulant. Daniel had to keep charging her to walk slowly. "Don't go so fast, little Dan'l, or you'll get overhet, and then what will Mis' Dean say?" he continually repeated.

Little Dan'l's thin, pretty face peeped up at him from between the sides of her green sunbonnet. She pointed one dainty finger at a cloud of pale yellow butterflies in the field beside which they were walk-ing. "Want to chase flutterbies," she chirped.

Little Dan'l had a fascinating way of misplacing her consonants in long words.