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As for Leslie, she liked well enough, as we know, to look pretty; it was, or had been, till other thoughts of late had begun to "crowd it out," something like a besetting weakness; she had only lately to tell the whole truth as it seldom is told begun to be ashamed, before her higher self, to turn, the first thing in the morning, with a certain half-mechanical anxiety toward her glass, to see how she was looking.
Where do you suppose all those people came from?" Alicia's rejoinder was not an answer to the half-mechanical query. "Mr. Ford, a little while ago I told you I must have time to consider: I I have considered. You must fight for your life and your good name. You must make Uncle Sidney see things as they are that they are not as he thinks they are." "I can't," he said stubbornly.
This manner was observable in the half-mechanical courtesy, with which he removed the bars, and took hold of the stranger's horse as also in some phrases of welcome, to which he gave utterance in my hearing. For myself, I was no longer regarded, any more than if I had been one of the dead-woods that stood around the clearing.
He only spoke when his old master addressed him; and then in a constrained, half-mechanical way, which might have excited the wonder of any one less supremely indifferent than Henry Dunbar to the feelings of his fellow-creatures. The Anglo-Indian finished his luncheon, left the table, and walked to the window: but Joseph Wilmot still sat with a full glass before him.
The retrograde movement on the part of the horse was evidently the result of terror, at the sight of some object in front. It was aided also by the half-mechanical action of the rider: who, pulling continuously on the bridle, and repeating her cries for help, appeared equally to suffer from affright! My astonishment was of short duration.
Whether I really heard the sound, or only fancied I heard it by some half-mechanical action of the brain, roused by the association of ideas I do not even yet know.
Billy Louise guessed shrewdly that he was down in the meadows, looking over the cattle and trying to estimate the extent of the thievery. She put Blue in the stable and fed him, with that half-mechanical habit of attending to the needs of one's mount which becomes second nature to the range-bred. She would not go on to the Wolverine; that needed no decision; she accepted it at once as a fact.
Such a spectacle forces one into an agreement with Wells, that it is a "monstrous absurdity" that women who are "discharging their supreme social function, that of rearing children, should do it in their spare time, as it were, while they 'earn their living' by contributing some half-mechanical element to some trivial industrial product."
I thank God's mercy." With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an unconscious challenge. Laird looked up whimsically. "So you really think God merciful, sir?" "Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough." "Oh! I'm pining for something to bite on." Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly: "God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
The young girl raised her head quickly; her deep violet eyes seemed also to leap with a sudden suspicion, and with a half-mechanical, secretive movement, that might have been only a schoolgirl's instinct, her right hand had slipped a paper on which she was scribbling between the leaves of her book.
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