The constant reserve on his part appeared to be contriteness for having once presumed in a trying moment.
Her reserve was something that developed into an air that closely resembled irritability, and he couldn’t understand it in the least. It made him draw a little more closely into his shell. He thought that perhaps memory of his fault stirred hotly within her when she saw him—perhaps as the memory of that kiss burned even now on his lips.
Therefore matters of the Squire’s heart were in fully as bad a way as matters of the Judge’s pocket.
With the true status of her father’s position, financially and morally, Sylvena was mercifully unacquainted, for when she had fearfully questioned him he had as fearfully paltered and denied.
The old dog Eli was the only one who was really cheered by the visits of Phineas Look to the Willard place.
At first he had sat on the door-step of the office, meditatively gazing out across the Cove.
Then one day he remarked a very pretty lady who was surveying him from the window of the house, and was apparently motioning to him. But as Eli had never found that pretty ladies were at any time much interested in fuzzy old dogs, he reckoned he must be mistaken about the beckoning. However, he gently wagged his tail in order to be on the safe side of agreeability. Then he looked away with some embarrassment.
“Well, if that isn’t like master, like dog, may I be blessed,” stated the lady in the window to herself with much decision.
She came to the door, opened it a bit, and called through the crack with impatient tone:
“Here, you old fool, come in here and get a bite to eat. I’d like to speak out in just that same way to some one else,” she added.