"Don't you smell
it yourself?"
But Miss Nellie's thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar
interest.
"Nor hear it? Listen!"
"You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under a
roof," she replied coldly.
"That's true," repeated Low, in all seriousness; "it's not your fault.
But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water;
I feel it miles away. At night, though I may not see it or even know
where it is, I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am alone,
and I seem to hear it in my dreams. There is no music as sweet to me as
its song. When you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it
ripple in your voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more than
the rarest plants I find. It seems to live with me and for me. It is my
earliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I shall die in
its embrace. Do you think, Nellie," he continued, stopping short and
gazing earnestly in her face--"do you think that the chiefs knew this
when they called me 'Sleeping Water'?"
To Miss Nellie's several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry.
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