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No sound came from her and not a muscle of her body moved, but the delicate skin of the eyelids shivered momentarily. Oliver drew a long breath and stepped back. "She's dead," said Mr. Piper. "She's dead." And he began to weep, very quietly with a mouselike sound and the slow horrible tears of age.
This, indeed, was the reason why she had been brought to Essex when her infatuation was discovered by one of her married sisters, who, like the rest of the family, was extremely "low." Lady Jane was small in body and shrinking and delicate in character, somewhat mouselike indeed. Even her eyes were large and timid as are those of a mouse.
The door to the cabin was not barred. He opened it. There was nothing inside. The old stove was broken. The bare cots had not been used for months perhaps for two years. As he took another step an ermine scampered away ahead of him. He heard the mouselike squeal of its young a moment later under the sapling floor. He went back to the door and stood in the open. "My God!" he moaned.
He is a mouselike kind of creature, so thoroughly conscious of his own smallness, so thoroughly in love with his own importance, that he dreads the intellectual woman, who makes him feel microscopic. Despite the protests of such men, some of whom are editors, women are making progress.
And don't you think our Wenna would fascinate everybody with her mouselike ways and her nice small steps? And if they did have any trouble, wouldn't she be better to have somebody with her not timid and anxious and pettifogging, but somebody who wouldn't be cast down, but make her as brave as himself?"
No, he checked himself because in the manner of this frail and mouselike creature, dim though she once more was, there appeared a dignity, a reserve, that made intrusion curiously impossible. With an apologetic note in his voice a kind and friendly voice he said: "Please have your typewriter brought in here. I want you to do some work for me work that isn't to be spoken of not even to Mr. Tetlow."
Instead of the thinly haired mouselike tails of the ordinary shrews the tupaias have developed long bushy tails and in fact look and act so much like squirrels that it is difficult to convince the white residents of Yün-nan, who are accustomed to see them run about the hedges and walls of their courtyards that the two are quite unrelated.
But though he did not altogether understand, Armand St. Just could fully appreciate. All that was noble and loyal in him rose triumphant from beneath the devastating ashes of his own shame. Soon his mood calmed down, his look grew less wan and haggard. Hearing Jeanne's discreet and mouselike steps in the next room, he rose quickly and hid the letter in the pocket of his coat.
But as they stood waiting for a trolley-car to the New York ferry, on a street corner transformed by an arc-light that swung in the wind and cast wavering films of radiance among the vague wintry trees of a wood-lot, Ruth tucked her arm under his, small beside his great ulster, and sighed like a child: "I am ver-ee cold!" He rubbed her hand protectingly, her mouselike hand in its fur-lined glove.
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