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edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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really dead.”
“Dead as door-nails. You can do as you like in the rest of the house.
There’s not much of it—just one big living-room and one small bedroom.
Well built, though. Old Tom loved his job. The beams of our house are
cedar and the rafters fir. Our living-room windows face west and east.
It’s wonderful to have a room where you can see both sunrise and
sunset. I have two cats there. Banjo and Good Luck. Adorable animals.
Banjo is a big, enchanting, grey devil-cat. Striped, of course. I don’t
care a hang for any cat that hasn’t stripes. I never knew a cat who
could swear as genteelly and effectively as Banjo. His only fault is
that he snores horribly when he is asleep. Luck is a dainty little cat.
Always looking wistfully at you, as if he wanted to tell you something.
Maybe he will pull it off sometime. Once in a thousand years, you know,
one cat is allowed to speak. My cats are philosophers—neither of them
ever cries over spilt milk.
“Two old crows live in a pine-tree on the point and are reasonably
neighbourly. Call ’em Nip and Tuck. And I have a demure little tame
owl. Name, Leander. I brought him up from a baby and he lives over on
the mainland and chuckles to himself o’ nights. And bats—it’s a great
place for bats at night. Scared of bats?”
“No; I like them.”
“So do I. Nice, queer, uncanny, mysterious creatures. Coming from
nowhere—going nowhere. Swoop! Banjo likes ’em, too. Eats ’em. I have a
canoe and a disappearing propeller boat. Went to the Port in it today
to get my license. Quieter than Lady Jane.”
“I thought you hadn’t gone at all—that you _had_ changed your mind,”
admitted Valancy.
Barney laughed—the laugh Valancy did not like—the little, bitter,
cynical laugh.
“I never change my mind,” he said shortly.
They went back through Deerwood. Up the Muskoka road. Past Roaring
Abel’s. Over the rocky, daisied lane. The dark pine woods swallowed
them up. Through the pine woods, where the air was sweet with the
incense of the unseen, fragile bells of the linnæas that carpeted the
banks of the trail. Out to the shore of Mistawis. Lady Jane must be
left here. They got out. Barney led the way down a little path to the
edge of the lake.
“There’s our island,” he said gloatingly.
Valancy looked—and looked—and looked again. There was a diaphanous,
lilac mist on the lake, shrouding the island. Through it the two
enormous pine-trees that clasped hands over Barney’s shack loomed out
like dark turrets. Behind them was a sky still rose-hued in the
afterlight, and a pale young moon.
Valancy shivered like a tree the wind stirs suddenly. Something seemed
to sweep over her soul.
“My Blue Castle!” she said. “Oh, my Blue Castle!”
They got into the canoe and paddled out to it. They left behind the
realm of everyday and things known and landed on a realm of mystery and
enchantment where anything might happen—anything might be true. Barney
lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock
under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips
were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her
first kiss.
“Welcome home, dear,” Barney was saying.
CHAPTER XXVII
Cousin Georgiana came down the lane leading up to her little house. She
lived half a mile out of Deerwood and she wanted to go in to Amelia’s
and find out if Doss had come home yet. Cousin Georgiana was anxious to
see Doss. She had something very important to tell her. Something, she
was sure, Doss would be delighted to hear. Poor Doss! She _had_ had
rather a dull life of it. Cousin Georgiana owned to herself that _she_
would not like to live under Amelia’s thumb. But that would be all
changed now. Cousin Georgiana felt tremendously important. For the time
being, she quite forgot to wonder which of them would go next.
And here was Doss herself, coming along the road from Roaring Abel’s in
such a queer green dress and hat. Talk about luck. Cousin Georgiana
would have a chance to impart her wonderful secret right away, with
nobody else about to interrupt. It was, you might say, a Providence.
Valancy, who had been living for four days on her enchanted island, had
decided that she might as well go in to Deerwood and tell her relatives
that she was married. Otherwise, finding that she had disappeared from
Roaring Abel’s, they might get out a search warrant for her. Barney had
offered to drive her in, but she had preferred to go alone. She smiled
very radiantly at Cousin Georgiana, who, she remembered, as of some one
known a long time ago, had really been not a bad little creature.
Valancy was so happy that she could have smiled at anybody—even Uncle
James. She was not averse to Cousin Georgiana’s company. Already, since
the houses along the road were becoming numerous, she was conscious