“Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the
child, but I think she has. Looks so
to me. I’ve seen cases before. You
see, she’s kept that child in her head just
the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms
a little chubby thing. But here it didn’t
elect to stay a child. No, it elected to
grow up, which it did. And in these twenty-seven
years it has learned all the deep scientific learning
there is to learn, and is studying and studying and
learning and learning more and more, all the time,
and don’t give a damn for anything but
learning; just learning, and discussing gigantic problems
with people like herself.”
“Well?”
“Stormfield, don’t you see? Her
mother knows cranberries, and how to tend them,
and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and
not another blamed thing! Her and her daughter
can’t be any more company for each other now
than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise. Poor
thing, she was looking for a baby to jounce; I
think she’s struck a disapp’intment.”
“Sandy, what will they do—stay unhappy
forever in heaven?”
“No, they’ll come together and get adjusted
by and by. But not this year, and not next.
By and by.”
I had been having considerable trouble with my wings.
The day after I helped the choir I made a dash or
two with them, but was not lucky. First off,
I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and
brought him down—brought us both down, in
fact. Next, I had a collision with a Bishop—and
bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp
words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging into
a grave old person like that, with a million strangers
looking on and smiling to themselves.
I saw I hadn’t got the hang of the steering,
and so couldn’t rightly tell where I was going
to bring up when I started. I went afoot the
rest of the day, and let my wings hang. Early
next morning I went to a private place to have some
practice. I got up on a pretty high rock, and
got a good start, and went swooping down, aiming for
a bush a little over three hundred yards off; but
I couldn’t seem to calculate for the wind, which
was about two points abaft my beam. I could
see I was going considerable to looard of the bush,
so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead
strong on the port one, but it wouldn’t answer;
I could see I was going to broach to, so I slowed
down on both, and lit. I went back to the rock
and took another chance at it. I aimed two or
three points to starboard of the bush—yes,
more than that—enough so as to make it
nearly a head-wind. I done well enough, but made
pretty poor time. I could see, plain enough,
that on a head-wind, wings was a mistake. I
could see that a body could sail pretty close to the
wind, but he couldn’t go in the wind’s
eye. I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting
any distance from home, and the wind was ahead, I
