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Arbuton heard one of the boat's officers saying to the gentleman with the ex-military air, who stood next him beside the rail; and now, the band having drawn aside, he saw the bride and groom, the latter a common, stolid-faced savage, and the former pretty and almost white, with a certain modesty and sweetness of mien.
Very early indeed, when she had been a stolid-faced little girl with a hot desire for the doll possessed by her neighbour, she had had for nurse a woman who rejoiced in supernatural events. With ghost stories of the most terrifying kind she besieged Grace's young heart and mind.
There were two crude stretchers, borne by stolid-faced miners in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots. On the first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth just showing under his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down from his temple. On the next a man groaned and mumbled blasphemy between his groanings.
There were none to answer a question until these boyish soldiers had been paraded, counted, put through some manoeuvres of drill, and then "'bout face and march" off. They seemed so alive, so eager for fun, so different from the stolid-faced veteran soldier that I hoped inwardly that to-day's exploits would not deepen into anything worse than fun.
In the principal streets the stolid-faced Scotchman in a straw hat became a familiar figure. Strange fancies held him. He stood for an hour at a time looking at his face in a shop-window. The boot-blacks pointed at him and he disappeared down passages. He shook his fist at the 'bus-conductors, who would not leave him alone.
But I cultivated a slowness and brevity of speech. One day as I sat reading the attendant announced, "A visitor to see you, sir." Trembling with excitement and fear I tensely waited the coming of the visitor. Presently a stolid-faced young man followed the attendant into the room. "You remember Holknecht," said the nurse, "he is your assistant at the laboratory."
Lady Barbara had thoughtfully provided herself with an emergency supply of chocolate sweetmeats; children may sometimes be time-servers, but they do not encourage long accounts. As they approached nearer to the princely dais Lady Barbara stood discreetly aside, and the stolid-faced infant walked forward alone, with staggering but steadfast gait, encouraged by a murmur of elderly approval.
And at that I pushed back the panel and looked into the Mayor's Parlour." It seemed to Brent that every soul in that place, from the grey-haired chairman on the bench to the stolid-faced official by the witness-box was holding his breath, and that every eye was fastened on Krevin Crood with an irresistible fascination.
Carstairs, a red-haired, blue-eyed, stolid-faced young Scotsman, stepped into the witness-box with the air of a man who is being forced against his will to the performance of some distasteful obligation.
The mother stood in the middle of the floor wringing her hands. Granny sat on the sofa, stolid-faced as usual, and rolled one of her endless bandages. On the chair by the window sat the father, his shoulder against the wall, his left elbow on the table, and his head resting in his left hand. Keith could hardly believe what he saw. His father's face was contorted with pain or grief.
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