He rose slowly. There was a tightness in his throat; his head throbbed and hurt. His capacity for learning, the true offspring of his insatiable desire, had become so like a dry sponge drawing in from every trickle of knowledge which flowed through his remote habitation, that he missed no word of what she said—each had sunk deep into his mind as a marble that is tossed into a limpid pool, gradually settling until it rests on the clear bottom, forever to be undisturbed, but forever in sight.
It suddenly occurred to him that Bob had really called, and he took a step in that direction, but turned once more to look at her. No one could have met that look unmoved, much less this girl who had been the necessary cause of it. It was so haunted, so pleading for another chance, and he seemed so pitifully helpless in his awkwardness and homespun clothes, that in spite of herself two tears welled into her eyes, balanced, and fell. She dashed them quickly away and turned her back to him. Again the tightness seized his throat while wave after wave of something particularly cruel swept through him.
His sister had never cried—or, at least, not in his presence; nor had the few bare-footed girls he knew. They might have bawled their eyes out and he would have calmly walked away. But this one was different, very different, and he could not move; this was the teacher, his teacher, the thing he had set up on a pedestal by the throne of God Himself—yes, higher; or, at any rate, more continuously in his thoughts.
"Have you forgotten Bob wants you?" she finally asked.
"No'm," he answered. "I war jest 'bout ter go."
A woodpecker tapping on the dead top of a tree now stopped amidst a breathless stillness. Bees were droning in the air, and softly over the land came the song of a happy field hand. It was all very peaceful and very quiet; too peaceful, too cloyingly quiet for Jane just then, and, as he continued to stand, she fairly screamed at him:
"Are you petrified?"
"What's petrified?" he asked simply.
Slowly she turned and faced him; her eyes showing no tears, only tolerant surprise and amusement.
"Really, Dale, you are the most extraordinary person! Petrified means having become stone, or stony; sometimes stunned, or dazed. Now run along to Bob!"