As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his, and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force. They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown, cracked, and calloused pawlike hands of the men.
Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands, which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she could see he, too, had a fine hand—a slender, powerful hand like that people call an artist hand—a craftsmanlike hand.
He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into her eyes, and rose to go out.
"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.
Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said sullenly.
The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings—the dim red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for these homeless fellows.
An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.
"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the rollicking good times she had heard so much about and of which she had seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"
Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door. "Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling, Sam—only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."
This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.