positively droops over your mouth like a girl's ringlet. It's quite
enough for me to hear people talk of your inexperience, but really I
don't want you to look as if I had run away with a pretty schoolboy.
And, considering the size of that child, it's positively disgraceful.
And, one thing more, George. When I'm talking to anybody, please don't
sit opposite to me, beaming with delight, and your mouth open. And don't
roar if by chance I say something funny. And--whatever you do--don't
make eyes at me in company whenever I happen to allude to you, as I did
before Captain Heath. It is positively too ridiculous."
Nothing could exceed the laughing good humor with which her husband
received these cautions, nor the evident sincerity with which he
promised amendment. Equally sincere was he, though a little more
thoughtful, in his severe self-examination of his deficiencies, when,
later, he seated himself at the window with one hand softly encompassing
his child's chubby fist in the crib beside him, and, in the instinctive
fashion of all loneliness, looked out of the window. The southern
trades were whipping the waves of the distant bay and harbor into yeasty
crests. Sheets of rain swept the sidewalks with the regularity of a
fusillade, against which a few pedestrians struggled with flapping
waterproofs and slanting umbrellas. He could look along the deserted
length of Montgomery Street to the heights of Telegraph Hill and its
long-disused semaphore. It seemed lonelier to him than the mile-long
sweep of Heavy Tree Hill, writhing against the mountain wind and
its aeolian song. He had never felt so lonely THERE. In his rigid
self-examination he thought Kitty right in protesting against the
effect of his youthfulness and optimism. Yet he was also right in being
himself. There is an egoism in the highest simplicity; and Barker, while
willing to believe in others' methods, never abandoned his own aims.
He was right in loving Kitty as he did; he knew that she was better and
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