And often she sat by the big
wood stove and chatted in broken English with Neil Bonner. And he
came to look for her coming; and on the days she did not come he
was worried and restless. Sometimes he stopped to think, and then
she was met coldly, with a resolve that perplexed and piqued her,
and which, she was convinced, was not sincere. But more often he
did not dare to think, and then all went well and there were smiles
and laughter. And Amos Pentley, gasping like a stranded catfish,
his hollow cough a-reek with the grave, looked upon it all and
grinned. He, who loved life, could not live, and it rankled his
soul that others should be able to live. Wherefore he hated
Bonner, who was so very much alive and into whose eyes sprang joy
at the sight of Jees Uck. As for Amos, the very thought of the
girl was sufficient to send his blood pounding up into a
hemorrhage.
Jees Uck, whose mind was simple, who thought elementally and was
unused to weighing life in its subtler quantities, read Amos
Pentley like a book. She warned Bonner, openly and bluntly, in few
words; but the complexities of higher existence confused the
situation to him, and he laughed at her evident anxiety. To him,
Amos was a poor, miserable devil, tottering desperately into the
grave.
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