(NOTE: _Between this logogram and the last the Long's Peak Receptive
Pulsator was unfortunately not in operation for the space of a
fortnight, as the electrician who took the instrument apart for
adjustment found it necessary to return to Denver for oil._)
--Yes, dear, it's me, though if I did not know personality to be
indestructible I should begin to have my doubts. I have not made any
more mistakes, that is, not any bad ones, since I went to the Astoria
alone for lunch, and the elementals were so very disagreeable just
because I had no money. I know all about money now, except exactly how
you get it, and Tuck assures me that is really of no importance. I never
told Ooma how the blue-eyed Astorian paid my bill for me, and her
perceptive faculties have grown too dull to apprehend a thing she is not
told. Fresh roses still come regularly every day, and of course I can do
no less than express my gratitude now and then.--Oh, I don't know how
often, I don't remember.--But it is ever so much pleasanter to have some
one you like to show you the way about than to depend on hypnotizing
strangers, who may have something else to do.
--I told you last week about the picnic, did I not? The day, I mean,
when Bloomer took me into the country, and Tuck so far forgave my
rudeness to him as to come with us to carry the basket.--Oh, yes,
indeed, I am becoming thoroughly domesticated on Earth. And, my dear,
these humans are docility itself when you once acquire the knack of
making them do exactly as you wish, which is as easy as falling off a
log.--A _log_ is the external evidence of a pre-existent tree,
cylindrical in form, and though often sticky, not sufficiently so to be
adhesive.
--That picnic was so pleasant--or would have been but for Bloomer's
anxiety that I should behave myself, and Tuck's anxiety that I should
not--that I determined to have another all by myself--and I have had it.
I traveled to the same little dell I described before, and I put my feet
in the water just as I wasn't allowed to do the other day. And I built a
fire and almost cooked an egg and ate cake (an egg is the bud of a bird,
and cake is edible poetry) sitting on a fence.--Fences grow horizontally
and have no leaves.--Don't ask so many questions!
After a while, however, I became tired of being alone, so I started off
across some beautiful green meadows toward a hillside, where I had
observed a human walking about and waving a forked wand. He proved the
strangest-looking being I have met with yet, more like those wild and
woolly space-dwellers who tumbled out when that tramp comet bumped
against our second moon. But he was a considerate person, for when he
saw me coming and divined that I should be tired, he piled up a quantity
of delicious-scented herbage for me to sit on.
"Good morning, mister," I said, plumping myself down upon the mound he
had made, and he, being much more impressionable than you would suppose
from his Uranian appearance, replied:
"I swan, I like your cheek."
"It's a pleasant day," I said, because one is always expected to
announce some result of observation of the atmosphere. It shows at once
whether or not one is an idiot.
"I call it pretty danged hot," he returned, intelligently.
"Then why don't you get out of the sun?" I suggested, more to keep the
conversation fluid than because I cared a bit.
"I'm a-goin' to," he answered, "just as soon as that goll-darned wagon
comes." (A "goll-darned" wagon is, I think, a wagon without springs.)
"What are you going to do then?" I asked, beginning to fear I should be
left alone again after all my trouble.
"Goin' home to dinner," he replied, and I at once said I would go with
him.--You see, I had placed a little too much reliance on the egg.
"I dunno about that, but I guess it will be all right," he urged,
hospitably, and presently the goll-darned wagon arrived with another
man, who turned out to be the first one's son and who looked as though
he bit.
Together the two threw all the herbage into the wagon till it was heaped
far above their heads.
"How am I ever to get up?" I asked, for I had no idea of walking any
farther, and I could see the man's white house ever so far away.
"Who said you was goin' to get up at all?" inquired the biter,
disagreeably, but the other answered for me.
"I said it, that's who, you consarned jay," he announced, reprovingly.
When I had made them both climb up first and give me each a hand, I had
no difficulty at all in mounting, but I was very careful not to thank
the Jay, which seemed to make him more morose than ever. Then they slid
down again, and off we started.
Once when we came to some lovely blue flowers growing in water near the
roadside I told the Jay to stop and wade in and pick them for me.
"I'll be dogged if I do," he answered; so I said:
"I don't know what being 'dogged' means, but if it is a reward for being
nice and kind and polite, I hope you will be."
Whereupon he bit at me once and waded in, while the other man, whose
name, it seems, was Pop, sat down upon a stone and laughed.
"Gosh! If this don't beat the cats," he said, slapping his knee, which
was his way of making himself laugh harder.
I put the flowers in my hair and in my belt and wherever I could stick
them. But there was still a lot left over, and whenever we met people I
threw them some, which appeared to please Pop, but made the Jay still
more bite-y.
Presently we came to a very narrow place and there, as luck would have
it, we met an automobile.--Thank goodness, I need not explain
automobile.--And who should be at the lever all alone but--the Astorian.
I recognized him instantly, and he recognized me, which was, I suppose,
his reason for forgetting to stop till he had nearly run us down. In a
moment we were in the wildest tangle, though nothing need have happened
had not the Jay completely lost his temper.
"Hang your picture!" he called out, savagely, "What do you want?--The
Earth?"
And with that he struck the animals--the wagon was not
self-propelling--a violent blow, and they sprang forward with a lurch
which made the hay begin to slip. I tried to save myself, but there was
nothing to catch hold of, so off I slid and--oh, my dear, my dear, just
fancy it!--I landed directly in his lap.--No, not the Jay's.--Of course,
I stayed there as short a time as possible, for he was very nice about
moving up to make room for me on the seat, but I am afraid it did seem
frightfully informal just at first.
"It was all the fault of that consarned Jay," I explained, as soon as I
had recovered my composure, "and I shall never ride in his goll-darned
wagon again."
"I sincerely hope you will not," replied Astoria, looking at me with the
most curious expression. "It would be much better to let me take you
wherever you wish to go."
"That's awfully kind of you," I said, "but I don't care to go anywhere
in particular this afternoon, except as far as possible from that
objectionable young man."
The Astorian did not speak again till he had turned something in the
machine to make it back and jerk, and, once free from the upset hay, go
on again.
"Say, Sissy, I thought you was comin' to take dinner," Pop called out
from under the wagon, where he had crawled for safety, and when I
replied as nicely as I could, "No, thank you, not to-day," he said
again, quite sadly as I thought, "Gosh blim me, if that don't beat the
cats!" and also several other things I could not hear because we were
moving away so rapidly.
When we had gone about a hundred miles--or yards, or inches, whichever
it was--the Astorian, who had been sitting very straight, inquired if
those gentlemen--meaning Pop and Jay--were near relatives.
I showed him plainly that I thought his question Uranian, and explained
that I had not a relative on Earth. Then I told him exactly how I had
come to be with them, and about my picnic and the egg. I am afraid I did
not take great pains to make the story very clear, for it was such fun
to perplex him. He is not at all like the Venus people, who have become
so superlatively clever that they are always bored to death.
"Were you surprised to see me flying through the air?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he said; "I have always thought of you as coming to Earth in
some such way from some far-distant planet."
"Oh, then, you know!" I gasped.
The Astorian laughed.
"I know you are the one perfect being in the world, and that is quite
enough," he said, and I saw at once that whatever he had guessed about
me he knew nothing at all of the Settlement.
"Miss Aura," he went on,--he has called me that ever since that little
embryonic made his stupid blunder, and I have not corrected him--here it
is almost necessary to have some sort of a name--"Miss Aura, don't you
think we have been mere acquaintances long enough? I'm only human--"
"Yes, of course," I interrupted, "but then that is not your fault--"
"I'm glad you look upon my misfortune so charitably," he said, a trifle
more puzzled than usual, as I fancied.
"It is my duty," I replied. "I want to elevate you; to brighten your
existence."
"My Aura!" he whispered; and I was not quite sure whether he meant me or
not.
We were moving rapidly along the broad road beside a river. There were
hills in the distance and the air from them was in the key of the
Pleiades. There were gardens everywhere full of sunlight translated into
flowers, and without an effort one divined the harmony of growing
things. I felt that something was about to happen; I knew it, but I did
not care to ask what it might be. Perhaps if I had tried I could not
have known; perhaps for that hour I was only an Earth girl and could
only know things as they know them, but I did not care.
We were going faster, faster every moment.
"Was it you who willed me to come out into the country?" I asked. "Have
you been watching for me and expecting me?"
We were moving now as clouds that rush across a moon.
"I think I have been watching for you all my life and willing you to
come," he said, which shows how dreadfully unjust we sometimes are to
humans.
"While I was on another planet?" I inquired. "While we were millions
and millions of miles apart? Suppose that I had never come to Earth?"
We were moving like the falling stars one journeys to the Dark
Hemisphere to see.
"I should have found you all the same," he whispered, half laughing, but
his blue eyes glistened. "I do not think that space itself could
separate us."
"Oh, do you realize that?" I asked, "and do you really know?"
"I know I have you with me now," he said, "and that is all I care to
know."
We were flying now, flying as comets fly to perihelion. The world about
was slipping from us, disintegrating and dissolving into cosmic thoughts
expressed in color. Only his eyes were actual, and the blue hills far
away, and the wind from them in the key of the Pleiades.
"There shall never any more be time or space for us," he said.
"But," I protested, "we must not overlook the fundamental facts."
"In all the universe there is just one fact," he cried, catching my hand
in his, and then--
(NOTE: _Here a portion of the logogram becomes indecipherable, owing,
perhaps, to the passage of some large bird across the line of
projection. What follows is the last recorded vibragraph to date._)
--Yes, dear, I know I should have been more circumspect. I should have
remembered my position, but I didn't. And that's why I'm engaged to be
married.--You have to here, when you reach a certain point--I know you
will think it a great come-down for one of us, but after all do we not
owe something to our sister planets?--