Helen was halfway to the gate when she stopped to replace the rubber that stuck in the muddy corral and slipped from her heel. Her chin was quivering, her sensitive lips drooped and, feeling that Burt was looking at her, she raised her eyes to his. They were brimming full of tears. She looked for all the world like a sorrowful, disappointed, woe-begone little girl of not more than ten or twelve.
The unconscious pathos of some look or pose grips the heart harder than any spoken word and so it was that this unstudied trick of expression found the vulnerable spot in Burt's armor--the spot which might have remained impervious indefinitely to any plea. It went straight to his one weakness, his single point of susceptibility, and that was his unsuspected but excessive fondness for little girls.
The distinct picture that was firmly fixed in his unimaginative mind before Bruce was born was still there; the picture of that little girl with flaxen hair that had blue ribbons in it, with a laughing mouth that had tiny sharp teeth like pearls, and who was to come dancing to meet him with her arms outstretched each time that he rode into the yard. That the dream was never realized was one of the real disappointments of Burt's life. Inexplicably he saw that little girl again as he looked at Helen's upturned face with its quivering chin and swimming, reproachful eyes.
John Burt had a queer feeling of something wilting, crumbling inside of him, something hard and cold giving way around his heart. He could not have explained it, it was not his way to try, but he took an impulsive step toward her and called out: "Wait a minute! Go on in the house till I put up my horse, I'll hear what you have to say."