the word.
He arrived the next night, stepping from the car as it drew up before
the door, and Alcibiades, standing among the flowers talking with Miss
Stone, saw him and started and came forward swiftly. He had not known
that his father was coming--he ran a little as he came nearer and threw
himself in his arms, laughing out.
Achilles smiled--a dark, wistful smile. "You are grown strong," he said.
He held him off to look at him.
The boy's teeth gleamed--a white line. "To-morrow we go home?" he
replied. "I am all well--father--well now!"
But Achilles shook his head. "To-morrow we stay," he replied. "I stay
one day--two days--three--" He looked at the boy narrowly. "Then we go
home."
The boy smiled contentedly and they moved away. Early the next morning
he was up before Achilles, calling to him from the garden to hurry and
see the flowers before the mist was off them, and showing him, with
eager teeth, his own radishes--ready to pull--and little lines of green
lettuce that sprang above the earth. "I plant," said the boy proudly. "I
make grow." He swung his arm over the whole garden.
Achilles watched him with gentle face, following him from bed to bed
and stooping to the plants with courteous gesture. It was all like home.
They had never been in a garden before--in this new land... the melons
and berries and plums and peaches and pears that came crated into the
little fruit-shop had grown in unknown fields--but here they stretched
in the sun; and the two Greeks moved toward them with laughing, gentle
words and quick gestures that flitted and stopped, and went on, and
gathered in the day. The new world was gathering its sky about them;
and their faces turned to meet it. And with every gesture of the boy,
Achilles's eyes were on him, studying his face, its quick colour running
beneath the tan, and the clear light of his eyes. Indoors or out, he was
testing him; and with every gesture his heart sang. His boy was well...
and he held a key that should open the dark door that baffled them
all. When he spoke, that door would open for them--a little way,
perhaps--only a little way--but the rest would be clear. And soon the
boy would speak.
In the house Philip Harris waited; and with him the chief of police,
detectives and plain-clothes men--summoned hastily--waited what should
develop. They watched the boy and his father, from a distance, and
speculated and made guesses on what he would know; for weeks they had
bee
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