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There was no lack of men, white-faced, dull-eyed, dejected, some of them actually with the brand of starvation to be seen in their sunken cheeks and wasted limbs. No wonder that the swing-doors of the public-houses, where there was light and warmth inside, opened and shut continually. "Look," Brooks repeated, with a tremor in his tone.
The light was still there in that front room when he poked a tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house. But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then.
Nevertheless Mr. Brimberly was bored and dropping the paper, languidly cherished a languorous whisker, staring dull-eyed across stately terraces and wide, neat lawns to where, beyond winding yew walks and noble trees, the distant river flowed.
Ah! old stanch friend, with your deep, clear eyes and bright, quick glances, that take in all one has to say before one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal and have no mind? Do you know that that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior?
Thin-chested, round-shouldered, scraggy-bearded, dull-eyed and open-mouthed, they all looked alike all looked as ignorant, as stupid, and as lazy as they were poor and weak. They were "low-downers" in every respect, and made our rough and simple. minded East Tennesseans look like models of elegant and cultured gentlemen in contrast.
In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred, in the hot summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like the son of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head," in the dying autumn days, when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household, still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering harpers, in the dead winter, when the white plague of the North has caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they think of the frozen soil which must be quarried like rock to receive them, if their perpetual convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward accident, at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.
"It is only necessary for your majesty to make yourself known to the postmaster," said Colonel Balby. "And if he will not believe me, this fripon who declares that no one could tell by my appearance whether I was a rascal or not, this dull-eyed simpleton, who will not see the royal mark upon my brow, which my courtiers see so plainly written there? No, no, my friend, that is not the way.
"I suppose we're allowed to sit down for a minute when there's nothing to do?" she inquired of a plump, dull-eyed girl who was furtively polishing the nails of one hand with the ball of her other palm. "We're legally allowed to, if that's what you mean," replied the other. "But we're not encouraged to. I wouldn't, my first day, anyways, if I was you." "Thank you very much," said Winifred.
The girl came forward timidly, but when Albert turned his eyes on her and called, cheerily, "Good morning!" she flamed out in rosy color and recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting. She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast.
"If I was only like them triflin' bluegrass gals Joe tells about," she thought, "made up of nothin' or a little less, it wouldn't be no trick to tote me outen this; but dellaw! I'm just as much as that there ox of mine feels right to carry when I got a couple bags o' grist on, back an' front." She looked around the ring of fire, dull-eyed, disheartened. "Ain't no use," said she, aloud.
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