Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into
his eyes indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from
being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone
of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in all
ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor
pair of children. The generations were prepared, the pangs were made
ready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama.
In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, there
opened before Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay.
She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself
bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For
they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family
worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought
on the relaxation of supper. Already she knew that Robert must be
within-sides at the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for it was
Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted
Gilbert, who officiated.
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