But at such
times Day would put the tips of her fingers mysteriously to her
incarnadined dumb lips and appear to hearken on the seaward side. If a
willful light came sometimes in her eyes he did not see it.
But even on the seaward side there would not be heard, on such nights,
the slightest sound to break the quiet, unless that of little fish
jumping playfully in the violet light, and sending out great circles to
shimmer toward the horizon.
So it drew on toward Day Rackby's eighteenth birthday.
One morning in October they set out from Meteor for the village. A cool
wind surged through the sparkling brown oak leaves of the oaks at
Hannan's Landing.
"They die as the old die," reflected Jethro Rackby, "gnarled, withered,
still hanging on when they are all but sapless."
Despite the melancholy thought, his vision was gladdened by a magic
clarity extending over all the heavens, and even to the source of the
reviving winds. The sea was blown clear of ships. In the harbor a few
still sat like seabirds drying plumage. Against the explosive whiteness
of wind clouds, their sails looked like wrinkled parchment, or yellowing
Egyptian cloth; the patches were mysterious hieroglyphs.
Day sat sleepily in the stern of the dory, her shoulders pinched back,
her heavy braid overside and just failing the water, her eyes on the
sway of cockles in the bottom of the boat.
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