“I ought to have had them two days ago,” said Paul. He stood with his lips slightly apart looking at her, but without seeing her or seeing anything.
XXII.
“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!”
SO, in a sweet little thread of a voice, sang Cicely; her tones, though clear, were so faint that they seemed to come from far away. She was sitting in an easy-chair, with pillows behind her, her hands laid on the arms of the chair, her feet on a footstool. Her eyes wandered over the opposite wall, and presently she began again, beating time with her hand on the arm of the chair:
“Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home;
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake—awake.”
She laughed.
The judge left the room. He walked on tiptoe; but he might have worn hobnailed shoes, and made all the noise possible—Cicely would not have noticed it. “I can’t stand it!” he said to Paul, outside.
“How it must feel—to be as stiff and old as that!” was the thought that passed through the younger man’s mind. For the judge’s features were no longer able to express the sorrows that lay beneath; even while speaking his despair his face remained immovable, like a mask.
“But it’s merciful, after all,” Paul had answered, aloud.