For a moment the two stared at each other--it might have been as in
a mirror, so perfectly were their passions reflected in each line,
shade, and color of the other's face. It was as if they had each
confronted their own passionate and willful souls, and were
frightened. It had often occurred before, always with the same
invariable ending. The young man's eyes lowered first; the girl's
filled with tears.
"Well, ef ye didn't mean that, what did ye mean?" said Jim,
sinking, with sullen apology, back into his chair.
"I--only--meant it--for--for--revenge!" sobbed Maggie.
"Oh!" said Jim, as if allowing his higher nature to be touched by
this noble instinct. "But I didn't jest see where the revenge kem
in."
"No? But, never mind now, Jim," said Maggie, ostentatiously
ignoring, after the fashion of her sex, the trouble she had
provoked; "but to think--that--that--you thought"--(sobbing).
"But I didn't, Mag"--(caressingly).
With this very vague and impotent conclusion, Maggie permitted
herself to be drawn beside her brother, and for a few moments they
plumed each other's ruffled feathers, and smoothed each other's
lifted crests, like two beautiful young specimens of that halcyon
genus to which they were popularly supposed to belong. At the end
of half an hour Jim rose, and, yawning slightly, said in a
perfunctory way:
"Where's the book?"
The book in question was the Bible.
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