The men were in a flurry. They looked from one
to the other. “Dan! Look! See
who’s coming!” some cried again. “Dan!
Look!”
He scowled at last, and moved his shoulders sullenly.
“Well, don’t I know it?”
But they could not be convinced that his eyes were
in service. “Dan, why can’t you look!
See who’s coming!”
He made a gesture then of irritation and rage.
“Curse it! Don’t I know it?”
The man with a bandage of the size of a helmet moved
forward, always shaking hands and explaining.
At times his glance wandered to Dan, who saw with
his eyes riveted.
After a series of shiftings, it occurred naturally
that the man with the bandage was very near to the
man who saw the flames. He paused, and there
was a little silence. Finally he said: “Hello,
Dan.”
“Hello, Billie.”
The girl was in the front room on the second floor,
peering through the blinds. It was the “best
room.” There was a very new rag carpet on
the floor. The edges of it had been dyed with
alternate stripes of red and green. Upon the
wooden mantel there were two little puffy figures in
clay—a shepherd and a shepherdess probably.
A triangle of pink and white wool hung carefully over
the edge of this shelf. Upon the bureau there
was nothing at all save a spread newspaper, with edges
folded to make it into a mat. The quilts and
sheets had been removed from the bed and were stacked
upon a chair. The pillows and the great feather
mattress were muffled and tumbled until they resembled
great dumplings. The picture of a man terribly
leaden in complexion hung in an oval frame on one
white wall and steadily confronted the bureau.
From between the slats of the blinds she had a view
of the road as it wended across the meadow to the
woods, and again where it reappeared crossing the
hill, half a mile away. It lay yellow and warm
in the summer sunshine. From the long grasses
of the meadow came the rhythmic click of the insects.
Occasional frogs in the hidden brook made a peculiar
chug-chug sound, as if somebody throttled them.
The leaves of the wood swung in gentle winds.
Through the dark-green branches of the pines that
grew in the front yard could be seen the mountains,
far to the south-east, and inexpressibly blue.
Mary’s eyes were fastened upon the little streak
of road that appeared on the distant hill. Her
face was flushed with excitement, and the hand which
stretched in a strained pose on the sill trembled because
of the nervous shaking of the wrist. The pines
whisked their green needles with a soft, hissing sound
against the house.
At last the girl turned from the window and went to
the head of the stairs. “Well, I just know
they’re coming, anyhow,” she cried argumentatively
to the depths.
A voice from below called to her angrily: “They
ain’t. We’ve never seen one yet.
They never come into this neighbourhood. You just
come down here and ’tend to your work insteader
watching for soldiers.”
