"Val, couldn't you get your father's new-fangled lantern—that patent incandescent contrivance—and set it lighted at the top of the steps?"
"Y-yes, ma'am, if you think it won't look funny. It's like the head-light of an engine."
"Funny? Not at all. There's nothing your cousin Ethan dislikes so much as the dark—unless he's greatly altered."
So Val got the lantern, and set it where the wide diverging rays flared out across the street, as a fan of zodiacal light opens gaudily across the Milky Way on arctic nights, leaving travellers on the ways of this world but little illumined, for all the glory of heaven.
So with the patent incandescent lantern. It picked out the whitewashed hitching-post with an ostentation of good-will, flooded the farther side of the street, and fell with a kind of fierce satisfaction upon the ugly new wooden tenements opposite. But this side, gutter, and gate, and little flight of worn and broken steps, were left in denser darkness.
Val came in, complaining for the first time at the delay.
"I hope poor father isn't waiting all these hours for his supper."
"Oh, he'll go to the hotel, you may be sure."
Mrs. Gano did not speak as if the thought brought her particular satisfaction.