"This is bad for your throat,
after singing all day in the rain. _Voyou_!" he repeated of
himself.
Silence enveloped them, broken by the creaking of the blind man's chair
and the decreasing patter of the rain. Soon it stopped and Harry Baggs
went outside; stars glimmered at the edges of shifting clouds, a sweet
odor rose from the earth, a trailing scent of blossoming trees
expanded.
He sang in a vibrant undertone a stave without words. An uneasy form
joined him; it was Runnel.
"I b'lieve my head'll burst!" he complained.
"Leave that soda-caffeine be."
He would never forget Runnel with his everlasting pain; or Dake, who
lived by scaring women.... Great audiences and roses, and the roar of
applause. He heard it now.
V
Harry Baggs returned to the Nursery, where, with his visions, his sense
of justification, he was happy among the fields of plants. There he was
given work of a more permanent kind; he was put under a watchful eye in
a group transplanting berry bushes, definitely reassigned to that labor
to-morrow. He returned to the camp with a roll of tar paper and, after
supper, covered the leaking roof of the shelter. French Janin sat with
his blank face following the other's movements. Janin's countenance
resembled a walnut, brown and worn in innumerable furrows; his neck was
like a dry inadequate stem. As he glanced at him the old man produced a
familiar bottle and shook out what little powder, like finely ground
glass, it contained.
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