United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fanny Gilkan's face darkened, and she glanced swiftly at Howat Penny. He was filling a pipe, unmoved. Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny, was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners. "You wouldn't really go," he said aloud, half consciously.
It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes. Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist smiting a broad, hard palm.
It meant, Howat told himself, literally nothing: what complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse all were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous falsity.
He would see that there was another head founder here within a week. But there were many positions in the Province for a man of Gilkan's ability, there were few workmen of his sensitive skill with the charge and blast. Not only Howat's father, but Abner Forsythe as well, would search to the end all cause for the founderman's leaving.
Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry her father's clumsy gun all the way.
I can't manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, or the French forts." That this was not merely a passive but an active state of mind was amply expressed by his resolute movement toward Thomas Gilkan's house.
Word Of The Day