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Keeping a welcome space about me marched a cordon of stolid, scuttle-headed guards, who had joined us on our leaving the boat in which we had come along the channels of the Central Sea. The quick-eyed artist with the little brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects swayed and struggled under the multitude of conveniences that were considered essential to my state.
But if their faces showed the handiwork of the devil, from their chins down they were men cast in the mold of the image of God. From the biggest Dane standing close to six feet six inches to the smallest Jap less than five feet tall, they were men of iron and steel. Quick-eyed, quick-footed, hard, they were the sort of men to drive the fight against the desert.
Two or three midshipmen were lounging about the quarter-deck; here and there a seaman was on the lookout, at the halyards, or on a cathead; some twenty or thirty old sea-dogs were pacing the gangways or the forecastle, with their arms crossed and hands stuck in their jackets; and a quick-eyed, active quartermaster stood near the man at the wheel, conning the ship.
Although her aunt assured her that everything which had been done already, and which was now doing, was quite in rule, the quick-eyed and quick-witted Rose noted these unusual proceedings, and had an opinion of her own on the subject.
At last her curiosity gained the mastery, and she asked her aunt with an indifference, not so well assumed but that her color heightened a little, "Where is Mr. Hemstead?" "He went down to the city," replied Mrs. Marchmont, carelessly. The impulsive girl's face showed her disappointment and vexation, but she saw that quick-eyed Bel was watching her.
The minority haughtily and audibly expressed their dissent from the measures to be adopted, even after the delegates re-entered the room; their words and looks did not pass unheeded by the quick-eyed operatives; their names were registered in bitter hearts. The masters could not consent to the advance demanded by the workmen.
The triangular green, with its stocks and horse-pond, overlooked by the grey benignant church-tower, seemed a tame exchange for seething Cheapside and the crowded ways about the Temple or Whitehall; and it was strange to think that the solemn-faced rustics who stared respectfully at the gorgeous stranger were of the same human race as the quick-eyed, voluble townsmen who chattered and laughed and grimaced over the news that came up daily from the Continent or the North, and was tossed to and fro, embroidered and discredited alternately, all day long.
I blushed scarlet with delight; some servant-girl or other, who stood next to me, had seen it too quick-eyed that women are and was looking curiously at me. I turned, I knew not why, in my delicious shame, and plunged through the crowd to hide I knew not what. I walked on poor fool in an ecstasy; the whole world was transfigured in my eyes, and virtue and wisdom beamed from every face I passed.
Christine also gave him a brief smile, and said: "You need not go away. Come and see the pictures." Quick-eyed Dennis observed that she was filled with suppressed excitement. Her cheeks, usually but slightly tinged with pink, now by turns glowed and were pale. Miss Winthrop seemed to share her nervousness, though what so excited them he could not divine.
The bare Elgood Street room, the dingy outlook on the high walls of a warehouse opposite, the lines of blanched, quick-eyed artisans, the dissent from what she loved, and he had once loved, implied in everything, the lecture itself, on the narratives of the Passion; it was all exquisitely painful to her, and, yet, yet she was glad to be there.
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