Lonely O'Malley

THE sun mounted higher in the turquoise sky. The birds sang more sleepily. Faint and far away, from the flats down by the river, a few belated frogs still trebled and fluted. Then, lazily, the warm breeze stirred, and died away, and stirred again, scattering a drifting shower of cherry-blossoms through the heavy, indolent sunlight, murmurous with the hum and drone of many wings, where, for the hundredth time, a song-sparrow preached his vagabond philosophy of "Sweet! Sweet! Idleness—Idleness—idleness!"

It was a cloudless Saturday morning, and the end of May. There was something more than the smell of buds and young leaves in the air, something more than the sound of frogs and sparrows and bobolinks,—for when Piggie Brennan, the butcher's son, had delivered his roast of beef at Widow Tiffin's back door, he drew a generous slice of bologna from his trousers pocket, wiped it deliberately on his sleeve, and then wagged his head twice, solemnly, and with much conviction. This done, he poked his empty basket well in under Barrison's stable, and whistled three times, softly, for Redney McWilliams.

Redney, under stern inspection from the back kitchen window, was engaged in a deal of puffing and blowing and wheezing, as he intermittently wielded a buck-saw on a stick of elm cordwood, for some twenty languid strokes, and then, for an equal length of time, gazed vacuously and dreamily at his feet, "to spell his muscles," he had explained to the uncomprehending parental mind, preoccupied with stewing rhubarb in the back kitchen.

"S-s-stt! s-s-stt there, Redney!"

Then there came a discreet pause.

"Redney! Hi, there, Redney!"

The boy at the buck-saw, as he heard that husky whisper from the knot-hole in the back fence, slowly and cautiously turned his head, without in the least moving his labor-bent body.

"She 's watchin'!" he ejaculated, under his breath. Then there was another discreet pause.

"C'm' on fishin'!" whispered the husky voice, at last, through the knot-hole.