We can stand a little private roasting, I
hope; or has the sand run out of us altogether?"
Stung by his tone, Barbara answered in rather a hard voice:
"What we must bear, we must, I suppose. But why should we make trouble?
That's what I can't stand!"
"O profound wisdom!"
Barbara flushed.
"I love Life!" she said.
The galleons of the westering sun were already sailing in a broad
gold fleet straight for that foreshore where the little black stooping
figures had not yet finished their toil, the larks still sang over the
unripe corn--when Harbinger, galloping along the sands from Whitewater
to Sea House, came on that silent couple walking home to dinner.
It would not be safe to say of this young man that he readily diagnosed
a spiritual atmosphere, but this was the less his demerit, since
everything from his cradle up had conspired to keep the spiritual
thermometer of his surroundings at 60 in the shade. And the fact that
his own spiritual thermometer had now run up so that it threatened
to burst the bulb, rendered him less likely than ever to see what was
happening with other people's. Yet, he did notice that Barbara was
looking pale, and--it seemed--sweeter than ever.... With her eldest
brother he always somehow felt ill at ease. He could not exactly afford
to despise an uncompromising spirit in one of his own order, but he
was no more impervious than others to Miltoun's caustic, thinly-veiled
contempt for the commonplace; and having a full-blooded belief in
himself---usual with men of fine physique, whose lots are so cast that
this belief can never or almost never be really shaken--he greatly
disliked the feeling of being a little looked down on.
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