With a sniff of surprise, he then tore
open the envelop, and became immediately absorbed in the contents of the
inclosure, indicating his progress by much pursing and biting of his
lips, wrinkling of his forehead, and drawing together of his heavy
eyebrows. Having at length reached the end of the last page, he turned
it sharply about, and went through it once more, with half-articulate
grunts of comment; and finally, folding the letter carefully up, and
replacing it in the torn envelop, he caught the spectacles off his
nose, and, with them in one hand and the paper in the other, fixed his
eyes upon the vacant spot at the summit of the hill.
His daughter meanwhile had taken off her brown straw-hat, and was using
it as a fan, keeping up a light tattoo with one foot upon the plank
flooring. Her face was glowing with her four-mile walk in the hot sun,
but she showed no signs of weariness. The position in which she stood
was easy and graceful, but there was nothing statuesque or imposing
about it; it was evident that at the very next instant she might shift
into another equally as happy. Her eyes wandered from one object to
another with the absence of concentration of one whose mind is not fixed
upon any thing in particular. From the letter between the professor's
finger and thumb, they traveled upward to his thoughtful countenance;
thence took a leap to the decrepit water-spout which depended weakly
from the corner of the balcony-roof, and thence again ascended to a
great, solid, white cloud, with turreted outline clear against the blue,
which was slowly sliding across the sky from the westward, and
threatened soon to cut off the afternoon sunshine.
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