For a long while they sat there, alert behind their wall of rustling
reeds, watching sky and water. False alarms were not infrequent from
their decoys. Sometimes the outbreak of quacking and honking was
occasioned by some wandering gull, sometimes by a circling hawk or some
eagle loitering in mid-heaven on broad and leisurely wings, reluctant to
remain, unwilling to go; sometimes to a pair or two of widgeon or
pintails speeding eastward high in the blue. But the sparkling,
cloudless hours sped away, and no duck or goose or swan invaded the
vicinity. Only one sly old black duck dropped into the reeds far back on
the island; and Marche went after him with serious designs upon his
fraudulent old life.
When the young man returned, twenty minutes later, perfectly innocent of
duck murder, he found the girl curled up in her corner of the pit, eyes
closed, tired little head cradled in the curve of her left arm. She
waked as he slid into the blind, and smiled at him, pretending not to
have been asleep.
"Did you get him?"
"No. He went off at two hundred yards."
"Blue-bird weather," she sighed; and again they exchanged smiles. He
noticed that her eyes had somehow become exceedingly blue instead of the
clear gray which he had supposed was their color. And, after her brief
slumber, there seemed to be a sort of dewy freshness about them, and
about her slightly pink cheeks, which, at that time, he had no idea were
at all perilous to him. All he was conscious of was a sensation of
pleasure in looking at her, and a slight surprise in the revelation of
elements in her which, he began to decide, constituted real beauty.
"That's a quaint expression--'blue-bird weather,'" he said. "It's a
perfect description of a spring-like day in winter. Is it a local
expression?"
"Yes--I think so. There's a song about it, along the coast"--she
laughed uncertainly--"a rather foolish song."
"What is it?"
"If I remember"--she hesitated, thinking for a moment, then, with a
laugh which he thought a little bashful--"it's really too silly to
repeat!"
"Please sing it!"
"Very well--if you wish."
And in a low, pretty, half-laughing voice, she sang:
"Quiet sea and quiet sky,
Idle sail and anchored boat,
Just a snowflake gull afloat,
Drifting like a feather--
And the gray hawk crying,
And a man's heart sighing--
That is blue-bird weather:--
And the high hawk crying,
And a maid's heart sighing
Till lass and lover come together,--
This is blue-bird weather."
She turned her head and looked steadily out across the waste of water.
"I told you it was silly," she said, very calmly.