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Even the presence of Carita seemed of small comfort. Carita was lovely but, after all, she couldn't fill Grandmother's place, nor Uncle Cliff's, nor even Aunt Lucinda's. Uncle Cliff rose from the stiff-backed chair he had been occupying for the last half hour, and took Blue Bonnet's hand. Aunt Lucinda got up, too. A frightened, half panicky look came into Blue Bonnet's face.
Of late Sir John had felt a singular desire to sit down whenever opportunity should offer; but he had always been found standing on the hearthrug by the butler, and, hard old aristocrat that he was, he would not yield to the somewhat angular blandishments of the stiff-backed chair.
"Who you both are," rejoined Sir Marmaduke blandly, as he calmly sat down in one of the stiff-backed elm chairs beside the hearth, "and why worthy Mistress Lambert never speaks to you of your parentage."
The money compensation was in itself a source of considerable gratulation; but the fact that stiff-backed England had by a clearly impartial tribunal of the highest character been declared in the wrong was not the least pleasurable side of the result. American citizens should never forget the services, in this delicate and difficult matter, of Mr. Adams.
But in any case it would not have been an easy matter. Extraordinary, stiff-backed, thin figure all fin black, the observed of all, while walking hand-in-hand with the girl; apparently shy, but and here Fyne came very near showing something like insight probably nursing under a diffident manner a considerable amount of secret arrogance.
But the conversation just now was not of religion, or even dogma which in this room had so often been confused with religion. Eben Tollman was sitting in a stiff-backed chair across from his host. His face wore the immobile expression of a man who never forgets the oppressive fact that he is endowed with dignity.
The fateful doctrine of not-worth-while had set in. Father and son shook hands, and Sir John walked feebly to the stiff-backed chair, where he sat down in shamefaced silence. He was ashamed of his infirmities. His was the instinct of the dog that goes away into some hidden corner to die. "I am glad to see you," he said, using his two hands to push himself further back in his chair.
"Just thirteen." "And how many sisters have you?" Walter rather thought of asking, "What's that to you?" but as he saw no particular harm in answering the question, and did not want to seem too stiff-backed, he answered, "Three." "And are they very beautiful?" "I don't know; I never asked them. Are yours?"
William had his mother, and Esther had hers, and they had not seen each other for a year, though Mrs. Hight had spoken of a year's making no change in William even at his age. She must have been in the far eighties herself, but of a noble courage and persistence in the world she ruled from her stiff-backed rocking-chair.
Poleon followed suit; but the trader chose to prospect his own claims, and to that end called in a train of stiff-backed Indian packers, moved a substantial outfit to the creek, and thereafter spent much of his time in the hills, leaving the store to Doret. He seemed anxious to get away from the camp and hide himself in the woods.
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