Dawn | Page 3

her basket of clothes in good earnest.
A moment later she was holding up with stern disapproval two socks with gaping heels.
"Keith Burton, here's them scandalous socks again! Now, do you go tell your father that I won't touch 'em. I won't mend 'em another once. He must get you a new pair--two new pairs, right away. Do you hear?"
But Keith did not hear. Keith was not there to hear. Still with that strained, white look on his face he had hurried out of the yard and through the gate.
Mrs. McGuire, however, did hear.
"My stars, Susan Betts, it's lucky your bark is worse than your bite!" she exclaimed. "Mend 'em, indeed! They won't be dry before you've got your darnin' egg in 'em."
Susan laughed ruefully. Then she sighed:--at arms' length she was holding up another pair of yawning socks.
"I know it. And look at them, too," she snapped, in growing wrath. "But what's a body goin' to do? The boy'd go half-naked before his father would sense it, with his nose in that paint-box. Much as ever as he's got sense enough ter put on his own clothes--and he WOULDN'T know WHEN ter put on CLEAN ones, if I didn't spread 'em out for him!"
"I know it. Too bad, too bad," murmured Mrs. McGuire, with a virtuous shake of her head. "An' he with his fine bringin'-up, an' now to be so shiftless an' good-for-nothin', an'--"
But Susan Betts was interrupting, her eyes flashing.
"If you please, I'll thank you to say no more like that about my master," she said with dignity. "He's neither shiftless, nor good-for- nothin'. His character is unbleachable! He's an artist an' a scholar an' a gentleman, an' a very superlative man. It's because he knows so much that--that he jest hain't got room for common things like clothes an' holes in socks."
"Stuff an' nonsense!" retorted Mrs. McGuire nettled in her turn. "I guess I've known Dan'l Burton as long as you have; an' as for his bein' your master--he can't call his soul his own when you're around, an' you know it."
But Susan, with a disdainful sniff, picked up her now empty clothes- basket and marched into the house.
Down the road Keith had reached the turn and was climbing the hill that led to old Mr. Harrington's shabby cottage.
The boy's eyes were fixed straight ahead. A squirrel whisked his tail alluringly from the bushes at the left, and a robin twittered from a tree branch on the right. But the boy neither saw nor heard--and when before had Keith Burton failed to respond to a furred or feathered challenge like that?
To-day there was an air of dogged determination about even the way he set one foot before the other. He had the air of one who sees his goal ahead and cannot reach it soon enough. Yet when Keith arrived at the sagging, open gate before the Harrington cottage, he stopped short as if the gate were closed; and his next steps were slow and hesitant. Walking on the grass at the edge of the path he made no sound as he approached the stoop, on which sat an old man.
At the steps, as at the gate, Keith stopped and waited, his gaze on the motionless figure in the rocking-chair. The old man sat with hands folded on his cane-top, his eyes apparently looking straight ahead.
Slowly the boy lifted his right arm and waved it soundlessly. He lifted his left--but there was no waving flourish. Instead it fell impotently almost before it was lifted. On the stoop the old man still sat motionless, his eyes still gazing straight ahead.
Again the boy hesitated; then, with an elaborately careless air, he shuffled his feet on the gravel walk and called cheerfully:
"Hullo, Uncle Joe."
"Hullo! Oh, hullo! It's Keith Burton, ain't it?"
The old head turned with the vague indecision of the newly blind, and a trembling hand thrust itself aimlessly forward. "It IS Keith--ain't it?"
"Oh, yes, sir, I'm Keith."
The boy, with a quick look about him, awkwardly shook the fluttering fingers--Keith was not in the habit of shaking hands with people, least of all with Uncle Joe Harrington. He sat down then on the step at the old man's feet.
"What did ye bring ter-day, my boy?" asked the man eagerly; then with a quick change of manner, he sighed, "but I'm afraid I can't fix it, anyhow."
"Oh, no, sir, you don't have to. I didn't bring anything to be mended to-day." Unconsciously Keith had raised his voice. He was speaking loudly, and very politely.
The old man fell back in his chair. He looked relieved, yet disappointed.
"Oh, well, that's all right, then. I'm glad. That is, of course, if I could have fixed it for you--His sentence remained unfinished. A profound gloom settled over his countenance.
"But I didn't bring anything for you