Daddy
John, his neck craned round the blaze, surveyed him with bright, sharp
eyes of unemotional query, then flopped the bacon pan on the embers,
and said:
"He's all done."
Courant advanced a step, looked down on him and threw a sidelong glance
at Susan, bold with meaning. After her first moment of amazement, she
moved to David's side, drew the edge of the blanket over him, touched
his head with a light caress, and turned back to the fire. The plates
and cups were lying there and she quietly set them out, her eye now and
then straying for a needed object, her hand hanging in suspended search
then dropping upon it, and noiselessly putting it in its place.
Unconsciously they maintained an awed silence, as if they were sitting
by the dead. Daddy John turned the bacon with stealthy care, the
scrape of his knife on the pan sounding a rude and unseemly intrusion.
Upon this scrupulously maintained quietude the man's weeping broke
insistent, the stifled regular beat of sobs hammering on it as if
determined to drive their complacency away and reduce them to the low
ebb of misery in which he lay.
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