Perfunctory
but incomplete washings of his hands and face, after charcoal burning,
had gradually ground into his skin a grayish slate-pencil pallor,
grotesquely relieved at the edges, where the washing had left off, with
a border of a darker color. He looked like an overworked Christy
minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There
were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of
unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already
grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic
experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of
Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous presence entirely on
his daughter.
"Well! what's up now? Yer ye are calling me from work an hour before
noon. Dog my skin, ef I ever get fairly limbered up afore it's 'Dad!'
and 'Oh, Dad!'"
To Lance's intense satisfaction the girl received this harangue with an
air of supreme indifference, and when "Dad" had relapsed into an
unintelligible, and, as it seemed to Lance, a half-frightened
muttering, she said coolly,--
"Ye'd better drop that axe and scoot round getten' this stranger some
breakfast and some grub to take with him.
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