Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a

life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a

countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still

water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in

visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child's look by

an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the

necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced

the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality.

Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent

particular--her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its

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color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but

careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its

true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.

On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now

before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his

right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his

waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made

them feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder's

mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a

post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair

alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and

distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general,

being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.

He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young

woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and

exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite lost her

color for a moment.

He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open it."

"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as

unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you

have not come out here on my account--for--"

"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with his

cane, and she winced. "Do you agree?" he continued. "It is necessary

that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it

takes time to make up."

"Don't press me--it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more

of it. I can NOT part with it--so there!"

"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the

coffin-stool table. "How much do you get for making these spars?"




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