Page:Son of the wind.djvu/120

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SON OF THE WIND

Rader waiting there for him, but, as he rode up, he saw her standing on the side piazza talking to the boy George.

This individual started up to sight and memory like a gnome. He was standing close to the girl. She had hold of a button of his coat, establishing that communication of touch which seemed necessary to get his understanding, and the creature was looking up at her with eyes like a dog's. It set Carron's teeth on edge to see them thus. She was talking with him, not as Mrs. Rader had, but conversationally, with a sweet familiar vivacity. She gesticulated, seeming to employ the sign language as well as the language of words, finally waved her hands toward the drive and the trees, like Ariel dismissing some undersized, unassuming Caliban. He moved off down the steps, dragging his feet. She turned, saw Carron, nodded promisingly and ran in at the door.

He waited, fretting hotter than the chestnut. The whole front of the house seemed to have fallen asleep. But, from the back, presently he thought he heard voices. He thought they came from the other side of the door which closed the inner end of the front hall. He was not listening. The talking reached him as impersonally as the running of water or the flowing of wind; but, as it continued, wearing in on his consciousness, the sound of it grew on

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