Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem to hear. "Yes that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me now." He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was demanded of him. "I don't understand you!" Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last.
Oh, how it tortured me that last Gratcher the one we make in our own image and yet make to be perfect. It never hurt me before, but now I know why. It couldn't hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye but just now my eyes had to fall before it, and all in a second it was tearing me to pieces. That's the only defense against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it in the eyes unafraid.
In low throbbing tones he would report its fearful approach, stride by stride, on the crutches. This he could do by means of the Gratcher-eye, with which he claimed to be endowed. One having a Gratcher-eye can see around any corner when a Gratcher happens to be coming yet only then, not at any other time, as Allan had proved by experiment on the first disclosure of this phenomenon.
But the helpless misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient. Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the note of helpless suffering in her voice making him wince and fall back a step. "Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me so! It's the Gratcher isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, it must be!"
For, the Gratcher being his own invention, these moments of superiority to its terrors would inevitably seize him. Better than protecting Nancy did he love to report the Gratcher's immediate presence to Allan, daring him to stay on that spot until it put its dreadful head around the corner and shook one of its crutches at them.
And oh, it hurts so and it's all my own miserable fault!" "No, it's your goodness, Nance." He spoke very quietly now. "Only the good have a Gratcher that can't be laughed away. My own was late in coming. Your Gratcher has saved us." He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both his own. They rested there in peace, yielding themselves like tired children to caring arms.
His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he was at once concerned with this rather than with her question. "Why, what is it, Nance what if I was? Are you seeing another Gratcher?" "Bernal, quick, now please! Don't worry me needlessly! Were you at Mrs. Wyeth's to-day?" Her eyes searched his face. She saw that he was still either puzzled or confused, but this time he answered plainly,
It was a thing that went on enormous crutches, yet could always catch you if it saw you by daylight out of its right eye, its left being serviceable only at night, when, if you were wise, you kept in the house. Once the Gratcher saw you with its right eye the crutches swung toward you and you were caught: it picked you up and began to look you all over, with the eyes in the ends of its fingers.
He of the Gratcher-eye could positively not see around a corner, if, for example, Allan himself was there; the Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking