But all through the
day there were times when she could play with the boy in the
garden, and every afternoon, when it was not raining, she would
slip away to a little ravine behind the cabin, where a log had
fallen across a little brook, and there in the cool, sun-pierced
shadows she would study, read and dream--with the water bubbling
underneath and wood-thrushes singing overhead. For Hale kept her
well supplied with books. He had given her children's books at
first, but she outgrew them when the first love-story fell into
her hands, and then he gave her novels--good, old ones and the
best of the new ones, and they were to her what water is to a
thing athirst. But the happy days were when Hale was there. She
had a thousand questions for him to answer, whenever he came,
about birds, trees and flowers and the things she read in her
books. The words she could not understand in them she marked, so
that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how her
vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the
new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of
vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words.
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