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His feeling for Italy had to be explained in another way. It was the great sweet note of poetry, music and beauty, of that far country, vibrating across the years and the miles, taken up as a memory in the Missouri hills by Old Bernique and, through him, reaching a Missouri boy's heart, all tuned and pitched for it. That was all there was to Piney's story. It was only a fragment.
As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
If Piney's waiting for me to kneel in front of her, she'll wait all night. I'd like to see myself kneeling in front of a girl!" The words had hardly left his lips, before Kit played an old-time schoolgirl trick on him. Catching him by his collar, she twirled him about with an odd twist until he knelt in front of her.
Then a young boy, with a red sash strapped over his right shoulder and under his left arm, cantered up on a pony, pony and boy both tremendously important. "Piney's marshal er the day," said a big man, laughing indulgently. "D'you know the Steerin's air sendin' that tramp-scamp to Italy?" called another man with a bewildered, incredulous inflection in his voice. "Well he cand go fer all me.
Doris and Helen were far ahead, trying to get down some branches of dogwood that hung invitingly over the stone wall at the side of the road, and Kit laid one hand in comradely fashion on Piney's shoulder.
"The troub' has been," went on Bernique feverishly, "that we have not looked for the ore in that place where the ore is " "That's always the troub'," muttered Piney. He had got his composure back and he seemed now rather good-naturedly contemptuous. Piney's was not a nature to accommodate itself to the exaltation of an ore find.
"Oh no, come up to the house and meet our sixteen-to-one congressman, Quicksilver Sam." "No I'll go," chose Steering. "Say, can't I get through from the garden here, and go down the river road?" "Yes, you can. Samson shall bring your horse around, if you like. There's a bridle-path down to the river; it's Piney's way."
Piney's eyes held a little wistful gleam, but she smiled with the old dauntless tilt to her head. "I guess I do around Greenacres," she said. "You see, Honey and I always thought it would be our home some day, and about the first thing that I can remember is mother telling us all the places around here that she loved best when she was a girl. I suppose that's why I remember them all."
Down at the foot of the bluff again, Steering, a little sore-headed with the ache of anticipation, hope, doubt, sat his horse in Piney's company and watched the old man ride off up the river unattended. Steering felt excited and exalted himself, but the old Frenchman was really, as he said, "craze'." Piney was the only sensible one left.
Piney found a shivering voice at last, "ef I never git rich till I come down into an ugly hole fer riches I'll be mighty pore all my days." Bruce smiled absently at the boy's susceptibility, but threw a reassuring arm about his shoulder. He smiled again when presently Piney drew away. That was Piney's habit, as affectionate in instinct as a kitten, and as timid of manifestation as a wild doe.
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