Her feet were starting forward; her lips were opening to speak, when she heard something beside her, a breath drawn sharply in with a hissing sound. She turned, and met the eyes of the imbecile girl, gazing at her with strange and deadly looks.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
PRIMAL FORCES
COMIN' in to supper, Brand? The horn has blew!" Mr. Wisk paused, one foot uplifted for the next step.
To realize what a tribute to the blind man's personality lay in this pause, one must have known Mr. Wisk. As his internal clock pointed the approach of supper time he had been standing, poised for flight, an elderly and ramshackle Mercury on a half-dug potato hill. At sound of the horn he started, head bent forward, nose pointing as straight for the kitchen as ever porker's for the trough. He would not have stopped to put away his spade, because the corner behind the right-hand door jamb of the barn had been long since appropriated by him for this purpose; he could reach it without breaking step or slackening his pace. Probably nothing on earth would have checked him except the very sight that now met his eyes: the blind man standing just inside the door, feeling over various things on a shelf so high that he (a very tall man) could but just reach it. Mr. Wisk hesitated; it was his happy boast never to have been late to a meal since he came to manhood.
"Want—want I should help you?" he quavered.
"No, thank you, Wisk! I'll be in presently, tell Mrs. Bailey. I have to look for something just a minute, tell her."