“I do think,” he said, in the voice that made its own summer, “that it
be a very funny way to treat a chap as comes to thank ye kindly for
saving of his life, Prue Sarn, to take off the like of that’n, and try
to jump in the lake!”
His hand sent such a throbbing through me that I could scarce stand.
“What were you looking at when I came?” he asked me.
“The damsel fly, coming out of its shroud.”
“Once out,” he says, “they’re out for good. It costs a deal to get free.
But once free, they never fold their wings.”
“No,” I said, “and some of ’em go so high, I think, times, they might
flitter right into heaven.”
“We’d all like to do that, I’ll be bound, if we could choose our heaven.
I’m not very choice of golden streets myself. And I’d like my heaven
afore I die.”
“And what ud it be?” I asked him. I was so interested, I declare I’d
clean forgot my curse.
“I’m not quite sure yet,” he says, “but come a year, maybe, I’ll know.”
“There’s a long while,” I says, mocking at him, “to be hiver hovering,
choosing your bit of paradise.”
“Could you think of yours sooner, Prue Sarn?” says he.
I looked at his green coat, which made him a very personable man, and I
fixed on a place on the left side, just betwixt the sleeve of it and the
breast of it, where I’d lief lay my head, and I said—
“Ah. I’ve thought of mine.”
“Oh! Well, what is it?”
“I said as I’d thought of it, Mister Woodseaves. But my thoughts be my
own.”