“Yes, indeed, thank you, though I haven’t seen much of it yet. Do you go to Wilmington often?”
“Well, not very often. Victor goes to school every day on the steam-cars, to Rugby Academy, but, of course, not in summer; and the girls have some very pleasant friends in town, haven’t you, girls?”
“Yes, Mamma.”
“But it’s a long drive, and we find plenty to do out here. Oh, yes, you must, just a little piece! But we always drive in once a week to market—Victor, precious! I wouldn’t eat any more, darling; you’ll spoil your supper! No, honey, Mamma said no—well, just a teeny piece. We generally go Saturday, but this week we went Wednesday, so we didn’t go this morning.”
“Aunt Jo drove in.”
“How is your aunty, Mr. Cobb?”
“Mr. Post, Mamma.”
Presently he had to go, and they all went out on the front porch to watch him climb up on his bicycle. Victor and Maggie saw themselves skimming along on it with the clouds foaming about their heads; Mamma and May said the very notion made them feel faint; and Lily, blushing, tried not to look at the crushed peonies.
“Goodbye,” Edward said to Maggie, smiling at her, taking her hand in his.
What is happening? What is this feeling that floods them both? Two drops of water touch, and are one.
It was the most wonderful summer. The Sun said, “Lift up your hearts,” and the flowers answered, “We lift them up unto the Lord.” The big creamy roses had never been so fragrant, the river had never been so blue, the nights had never held such swarms of stars.
They got out the Chinese lanterns, lopsided, green and yellow and raspberry red, so crushed and dusty in their box in the attic, such miracles of beauty alight and afloat in the blue summer night. By their light, they ate the watermelons they had sailed across the river for, and popped the seeds at each other.
Edward came on Sunday evening to sing hymns with the Campions. While Mamma played the accompaniments, selecting one nice chord for the bass, which she stuck to through thick and thin, he would sing so loudly, so tunelessly, with such a sweet, serious expression on his face that Maggie would melt with love and laughter. Lily taught him to play chopsticks on the piano, and his Aunt Jo complained to Mamma that she was nearly driven crazy by his practicing.
Fourth of July! Victor was up before the sun, exploding his torpedoes on the bricks by the kitchen shed. That last one, found in the sawdust when he thought he had used them all! It sounded twice as loud as any.
Every now and then he had to go into the house to look at the rockets and Roman candles, lying there wrapped in lovely pastel colors, waiting for darkness. Then out again. The red and gold of the firecracker packages were as exciting as clashing Chinese gongs, and sometimes braided in with the bunches of red firecrackers was a yellow one, or a green one. Bang! Bang! And there was his toy pistol, and the round brown cardboard boxes full of magenta caps. Bang! Mamma lay in her darkened room with a handkerchief wet with eau-de-cologne on her forehead, and saw Victor with his right hand torn off—Victor blinded.
May gathered red and white Sweet-William and blue cornflowers for the dining-room table; and Albert made a big freezer of raspberry water-ice for the evening, when the Blows, and the Willie Campions, and Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Edward Post were coming for the fireworks.
The light never lingered so long as on Fourth of July; but at last it grew dark.
“Victor! Victor! Oh, honey, be careful!”
“It’s only a Roman candle, Mamma!”
“I won’t let him blow himself up, Mrs. Campion.”
“Oh, dear! Are you sure that it’s safe? Take care of him, Edward!”
(Take care of my darling, take care of my life and my love!)
The Roman candles burst softly into balls of ice-green, rose and blue. Over by the hedge were white flashes of teeth and rolling eyes, black faces melting into the night, soft voices full of sad cadences, broken by sudden yells of laughter, quickly hushed because of the white folks further up on the lawn.
Rushing up, tearing the darkness, the rockets ascended unto heaven, burst, spread into ferns of fire, blossomed into golden stars and tears that floated, melted, and were gone.
“Maggie? Where is Maggie?”
“Here I am, Edward.”
That was all he needed. He must be sure she was there, feeling everything with him.
Edward persuaded them to go bathing in the river at high tide. The girls used the boathouse as a dressing-room, sitting on the edge of the wobbly gunning skiff. The boathouse was musty smelling and dark, but through the cracks between the boards you could see the blue river dancing. There were old starch boxes full of cartridge shells, and wooden decoy ducks, some without their heads, that had belonged to Papa. Lily was afraid of the wasps that built their nests in the corners, but May was never afraid of them unless she was with a young man.
Getting out of their tight dresses, their shoes and stockings, stepping from circle after circle of petticoat, calling “Don’t look!” to each other, as they took off corset covers, drawers, corsets shaped like hourglasses, chemises, and long ribbed shirts, getting into their blue flannel bathing-suits with the white braid on the sailor collars stained café au lait by the river, they felt like butterflies, light, free as air, escaped from their thick cocoons.
Maggie could swim a little, and so could Victor, though for Mamma he drowned each day they bathed. Lily pretended to swim, but she was really hopping along with one foot on the bottom. But May wanted Edward to teach her.
“Oh! Oh! Edward! Oh, I’m going down! Oh, don’t let me go down!”
He disentangled her clinging arms.
“Now look here, May, do you want to learn, or
