“How perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, at the right moment.
Cope smiled deprecatingly. “It might be made to go very nicely,” he said.
“It has gone very nicely,” insisted Amy; “it did, this last time.” She waved her bow with some vivacity. She had heaved the whole of her young self into the work; she had been buoyed up by Cope’s tones, which, with repetition, had gathered assurance if not expressiveness; and she based her estimate of the general effect on the impression which her own inner nature had experienced. And her impression was heightened when Pearson, forging forward, and ignoring both Cope and Carolyn, thanked her richly and emphatically for her part—a part which, to him, seemed the whole.
Hortense, who had kept her place behind the large lampshade, twisted her interlocked fingers and said no word. Foster, who had disposed himself on an inconspicuous couch, kept his own counsel. After all, omne ignotum: Cope’s singing had sounded better from upstairs. At close range a ringing assertiveness had somehow failed.
Cope had come with no desire to extend his stay beyond the limits of an evening call. He declined to sing on his own account, and soon rose as if to make his general adieux.
“You won’t give us one of your own songs, then?” asked Medora Phillips, in a disappointed tone. “And at my dinner—”
No, she could not quite say that, at her dinner, Cope, whatever he had failed to do, had contributed no measure of entertainment for her guests.
“Give us a recitation, then,” persisted Medora; “or tell us a story. Or make up”—here she indulged herself in an airily imperious flight—“a story of your own on the spot.”
A trifling request, truly. But—
“Heavens!” said Cope. “I am not an author—still less an improvvisatore.”
“I am sure you could be,” returned Medora fondly. “Just try.”
Cope sat down again and began to run his eye uncomfortably about the room, as if dredging the air for an idea. Behind one corner of a mirror was a large bunch of drying leaves. They had been brought in from the sand dunes as a decorative souvenir of the autumn, and had kept their place through mere inertia: an oak bough, once crimson and russet; a convoluted length of bittersweet, to which a few split berries still clung; and a branch of sassafras, with its intriguing variety of leaves—a branch selected, in fact, because it gave, within narrow compass, the plant’s entire scope and repertoire as to foliage.
Cope caught at the sassafras as a falling balloonist catches at his parachute.
“Well,” he said, still reluctant and fumbling, “perhaps I can devise a legend: the Legend, let us say, of the Sassafras Bush.”
“Good!” cried Medora heartily.
Pearson, whispering to Amy Leffingwell, gave little heed to Cope and his strained endeavor to please Mrs. Phillips. Foster, quite passive, listened with curiosity for what might come.
“Or perhaps you would prefer folklore,” Cope went on. “Why the Sassafras has Three Kinds of Leaves, or something like that.”
“Better yet!” exclaimed Medora. “Listen, everybody. Why the Sassafras has Three Kinds of Leaves.”
Pearson stopped his buzzings, and Cope began. “The Wood-nymphs,” he said slowly, “were a nice enough lot of girls, but they labored under one great disadvantage: they had no thumbs.”
Hortense pricked up her ears. Did he mean to be personal? If so, he should find that one of the nymphs had a whole hand as surely as he himself had a cheek.
Cope paused. “Of course you’ve got to postulate something,” he submitted apologetically.
“Of course,” Medora agreed.
“So when they bought their gloves, or mittens, or whatever their handgear might be called, they usually patronized the hickory or the beech or some other tree with leaves that were—”
“Ovate!” cried Medora delightedly.
“Ovate, yes; or whatever just the right word may be. But a good many of them traded at the Sign of the Sassafras, where they found leaves that were similar, but rather more delicate.”
“I believe he’s going to do it,” thought Foster.
“Yet the nymphs knew that they lacked thumbs and kept on wanting them. So, during the long, dull winter, they put their minds to it, and finally thumbs came.”
“Willpower!” said Medora.
“And early in April they went to the Sassafras and said: ‘We have thumbs! We have thumbs! So we need a different sort of mitten.’
“The Sassafras was only half awake. ‘Thumbs?’ he repeated. ‘How many?’
“ ‘Two!’ cried the nymphs. ‘Two!’
“A passing breeze roused the Sassafras. He became at least three-quarters awake.”
“I doubt it,” muttered Hortense.
“ ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘I aim to supply all new needs. Come back in a month or so, and meanwhile I’ll see what I can do for you.’
“In May the nymphs returned with their thumbs and asked, ‘How about our new mittens?’ ”
The story was really under way now, and Cope went on with more confidence and with greater animation.
“ ‘Look and see,’ said the Sassafras.
“They looked and saw. Among its simple ordinary leaves were several with two lobes—one on each side. ‘Will these do?’
“ ‘Do?’ said the nymphs. ‘We said we had two thumbs, but we meant one on each hand, stupid. Do? We should say not!’
“The Sassafras was mortified. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s all I can manage this season. I’m sorry not to have understood you young ladies and your needs. Come back again next spring.’
“It was a long time to wait, but they waited. Next May—”
Amy, now unworried by George Pearson, began to get the thread of the thing. Foster was sure the thread would run through. Hortense was still alert for ulterior meanings. Poor Cope, however, had no ambition to spin a double thread—a single one was all he was equal to.
“Next May the nymphs, after nursing their thumbs for a year—”
Hortense frowned.
“—came back again; and there, among the plain leaves and the double-lobed leaves, were several fresh bright, smooth ones with a single lobe well to one side—the very thing for mittens. And—”
“Yes, he has done it,” Foster acknowledged.
“And that,” ended Cope rather
