And I hope that neither you nor I have ever had that happen to us—such a letter thrust into our eyes!
When they whispered among themselves he grew cunning, and pretended to sing, while he listened. What he heard made him think that she was already come, but was in hiding to surprise him. Something was to happen the moment he went to sleep. And he fancied that they meant to bring her in at that moment. Well, he liked that. No surprise he had ever planned himself was quite so fine. Emmy was to be his Christmas gift!
But what they had spoken about was the paleness of his old face, and how he had recently “failed.” For he could not sleep now, or eat, for watching and waiting.
And old Liebereich carried his cunning on to a desperate end. He pretended to be prodigiously sleepy. Yet, when they would have hustled him off to bed, he suddenly and savagely rebelled, stamped his feet, and put them out of the house, in a specious fury they could not withstand.
“I kin put myself to bed,” he cried happily after them. “I ain’t no dog-gone baby. I won’t be bossed in my own house!”
But the moment he had closed the door upon them he laughed.
And when he pulled down the blinds he did not know that he shut out their peeping eyes.
It all had made him tired.
IV
THE NIGHT-SHIRT WITH THE FEATHER-STITCHING OF BLUE
He unlocked the door by the fireplace, presently, and lighted two new candles. Then he got from the bottom drawer the night-shirt with the blue feather-stitching about the collar, and put it on. His trousers lay on the floor.