“Twelve servants!” ejaculated Hannah almost with a groan. “Well, that don’t seem to me right.”
They were close to the house now and silence fell on them, as though the antagonism of its owners was exhaled upon them from the mansion’s aggressive bulk, like an unspoken curse. They felt overawed, and at the same time proud that one of their number should have even the most distant affiliations with a family too exclusive to know her. The women with their more responsive and sensitive natures felt it more delicately than Josh, who blunderingly expressed one of the thoughts of the moment by remarking,
“Some day you’ll live in there, Berny, and boss the twelve servants.”
“Rats!” said Berny, giving her head an angry toss. “I’d rather live in my flat and boss Sing.”
Josh’s whistle of facetious incredulity died away incomplete, for at that moment the hall door opened and a portly masculine shape emerged upon the porch. Berny, at the first glance, was not sure of its identity, but her doubts were dispelled by her brother-in-law’s quick sentence, delivered on the rise of a surprised breath.
“Bill Cannon, by gum! What’s he doing there?”
This name, as powerful to conjure with in the city as in the mining-camps, cast its instantaneous spell upon the sisters, who stared avid-eyed upon the great man. He for his part seemed oblivious to their glances and to their presence. He stood on the top step for a musing moment, looking down with that sort of filmy fixity of gaze which is noticeable in the glance of the resting eagle. His appearance was a last crowning touch to the proud, unapproachable distinction of the Ryans.
“Don’t he look as if he was thinking?” said Hazel in a whisper. “I wonder what’s on his mind.”
“Probably that Monday’s pay-day and he don’t know whether he can scratch through,” said the jocose Josh.
Berny did not say anything. She felt the interest in Cannon that she did in all conquering, successful people, and in her heart it gave her a sense of added importance to think that the family she had married into and who refused to know her was on friendly terms with the Bonanza King.