To give the greater force to his words, he checked himself in an involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching and yawning figures on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in one eternal state of weariness from the waist upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling Bowl. He sang it with an assumption of a Devil-may-care voice, that made his face a thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful than ever.
"What! You're singing, are you?" said Tackleton, putting his head in at the door. "Go it! I can't sing."
Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn't what is generally termed a singing face, by any means.
"I can't afford to sing," said Tackleton. "I'm glad you can. I hope you can afford to work too. Hardly time for both, I should think?"
"If you could only see him, Bertha, how he's winking at me!" whispered Caleb. "Such a man to joke! You'd think, if you didn't know him, he was in earnest—wouldn't you now?"
The Blind Girl smiled and nodded.
"The bird that can sing and won't sing must be made to sing, they say," grumbled Tackleton. "What about the owl that can't sing, and oughtn't to sing, and will sing; is there anything that he should be made to do?"
"The extent to which he's winking at this moment!" whispered Caleb to his daughter. "Oh, my gracious!"
"Always merry and light-hearted with us!" cried the smiling Bertha.
"Oh! you're there, are you?" answered Tackleton. "Poor Idiot!"