Rosshalde Read Free Page A

a name in the bee language too!”
    â€œOf course, but we can’t know it, only the bees know. Perhaps they call them honey flowers.”
    Pierre thought it over.
    â€œThat’s no good,” he finally decided. “They find just as much honey in clover or nasturtiums; they can’t have the same name for all the flowers.”
    The boy was attentively watching a bee as it flew around the calyx of a carnation, stopped in mid-air with buzzing wings, and then hungrily penetrated the rosy hollow.
    â€œHoney flowers!” he said contemptuously, and fell silent. He had discovered long ago that the prettiest and most interesting things are the very ones that cannot be known or explained.
    Veraguth stood behind the hedge and listened; he observed the calm earnest face of his wife and the lovely, prematurely fragile face of his darling, and his heart turned to stone at the thought of the summers when his first son was still such a child. He had lost him, and his mother as well. But this child he would not lose, no no. Like a thief behind his hedge he would spy on him, he would lure him and win him, and if this boy should also turn away from him, he had no desire to live.
    Soundlessly he moved off over the grassy path and withdrew beneath the trees.
    Loafing is not for me, he thought irritably, and hardened himself. He went back to his painting and indeed, overcoming his disinclination and surrendering to old habit, he recaptured the industrious tension which tolerates no digressions and concentrates all our energies on the work in hand.
    He was expected for lunch at the manor house, and at the approach of noon he dressed carefully. Shaved, brushed, and clad in a blue summer suit, he looked perhaps not younger but fresher and more resilient than in his shabby studio clothes. He reached for his straw hat and was about to open the door when it opened toward him and Pierre came in.
    â€œHow are you, Pierre? Was your teacher nice?”
    â€œOh yes, only he’s so boring. When he tells a story it’s not for the pleasure, it’s just another lesson, and the end is always that good children must do like this or like that. —Have you been painting, Papa?”
    â€œYes, working on those fishes. It’s almost finished, you may see it tomorrow.”
    He took the boy’s hand and went out with him. Nothing in the world so soothed him or touched the submerged kindness and tenderness in him as to walk beside the boy, to adjust his pace to his short steps, and to feel the child’s light trusting hand in his own.
    As they left the park and started across the meadow beneath the spindly drooping birches, the boy looked around and asked: “Papa, are butterflies afraid of you?”
    â€œWhy? I don’t think so. One sat down on my finger a little while ago.”
    â€œYes, but there aren’t any here now. Sometimes when I go over to see you by myself and I come this way, there are always lots and lots of butterflies on the path, and they’re called blues, I know that, and they know me and they like me, they always fly around right close to me. Is it possible to feed butterflies?”
    â€œIndeed it is, we must try it very soon. You put a drop of honey on your hand and hold it out very quietly until the butterflies come and drink it.”
    â€œWonderful, Papa, we’ll try. Won’t you tell Mama she has to give me a little honey? Then she’ll know I really need it and it’s not just foolishness.”
    Pierre ran ahead through the open gate and the broad hallway; blinded by the sunlight, his father was still looking for the hatrack in the half light, and groping for the dining-room door, long after the boy was inside, pressing his plea on his mother.
    The painter entered and held out his hand to his wife. She was somewhat taller than he, strong and fit, but without youth, and though she had ceased to love her husband she still regarded the loss of his affection as