human
That's the pig bed out there, Mrs. Maitland explained, kindly;
gpt
Mamma, I'd--I'd like to go home, poor Nannie managed to say;
human
Scares you? What scares you?
gpt
It's so--dreadful,
human
You don't suppose I'd bring you anywhere where you could get hurt? her stepmother said, incredulously. She was astonished to the point of being pained. How could Herbert's girl be such a fool? She remembered that Blair used to call his sister the
gpt
human
Good name, she thought, contemptuously. She made no allowance for the effect of this scene of night and fire, of stupendous shadows and crashing noises, upon a little bleached personality, which for all these years, had lived in the shadow of a nature so dominant and aggressive that, quite unconsciously, it sucked the color and the character out of any temperament feebler than itself. Sarah Maitland frowned, and said roughly,
gpt
Oh, you can go home, if you want to; Mr. Parks! she called to the foreman;
human
It's perfectly awful!
gpt
Oh, you get used to it, he said, kindly.
human
You'd 'a knowed, he told one of his workmen afterward,
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Old One, after Nannie had gone, poked about for a moment or two,--
human
her men used to say, with reluctant admiration of the ruthless shrewdness that was instant to detect their shortcomings; then she went down the slight incline from the furnace hearth to the open stretch of molding-sand; there was a pile of rusty scrap at one side, and here, in the soft April darkness under the stars, she seated herself, looking absently at the furnace and the black, gnome-like figures of the helpers. She was thinking just what Parks had thought, that Nannie had none of her blood in her.
gpt
Afraid! said Sarah Maitland. Well, Blair had never been afraid, she would say that for him; he was a fool, and pig-headed, and a loafer; but he wasn't a coward. He had even thought it fine, that scene of power, where civilization made itself before his very eyes! When would he think it fine enough to come in and go to work? Come in, and take his part in making civilization? Then she noticed the bending figure of the keeper opening the notch of the furnace; instantly there was a roar of sparks, and a blinding white gush of molten iron flowing like water down into the sand runner. The sudden, fierce illumination drowned the stars overhead, and brought into clear relief her own figure, sitting there on the pile of scrap watching the flowing iron. Tiny blue flames of escaping gas danced and shimmered on its ineffable rippling brightness, that cooled from dazzling snow to rose, then to crimson, and out in the sand, to glowing gray. Blair had called it
human
Well, it was a pretty sight! She wished she had told him that she herself thought it pretty; but the fact was, it had never struck her before.
gpt
I suppose I don't notice pretty things very much, she thought, in some surprise.
human
Well, I've never had time for foolishness. Too busy making money for Blair. She sighed; after all, he wasn't going to have the money. She had been heaping up riches, and had not known who should gather them. She had been too busy to see pretty things. And why? That orphan asylums and reformatories--and David Richie's hospital--should have a few extra thousands! A month ago the fund she was making for David had reached the limit she had set for it, and only to-day she had brought the bank certificate of deposit home with her. She had felt a little glow of satisfaction when she locked it into the safe in her desk; she liked the consciousness of a good job finished. She was going to summon the youngster to Mercer, and tell him how he was to administer the fund; and if he put on any of his airs and graces about accepting money, she would shut him up mighty quick!
gpt
I'll write him to-morrow, if I've time, she had said. At the moment, the sense of achievement had exhilarated her; yet now, as she sat there on the heap of scrap, bending a pliant boring between her fingers, her pillar of fire roaring overhead from the chimneys of the furnaces, the achievement seemed flat enough. Why should she, to build a hospital for another woman's son, have worked so hard that she had never had time to notice the things her own son called
human
? Not his china beetles, of course, or truck like that; but the shimmering flow of her iron,--or even that picture, for which she was out of pocket $5,000.
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I can see you might call it pretty, if it hadn't cost so much, she admitted. Yes, she had worked, she told herself,
human
to earn money for Blair!--only to make him idle and to have him say that thing about her clothes which Goose Molly had said before he was born.
gpt
Wonder if I've been a fool?