Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/14

6 his haggard appearance, the green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the beaded brow. But she was counting the rebounds of her ball, bent on sustaining her play as long as was possible to her. She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and had the old man not been overtired, he would have thought so with a throb of parental pride. She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in bone, with face and hands of porcelain transparency and whiteness, with, moreover, that incomparable complexion only seen in the British Isles, and then only with red-gold hair. Her bronze-leather shoes were the hue of some large flies that basked and frisked on the warm wall, only slightly disturbed by the girl's play, to return again and run and preen themselves again, and glitter jewel-like as studs on that sun-baked, lichen-enamelled wall. Her eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these flies, iridescent with the changing lights of the declining sun, and the changed direction of her glance following the dancing ball of guelder-rose. Her long fingers might have been of china, but that when raised so that the sun struck their backs they were turned to a translucent rose. There was no color in her cheek, only the faintest suffusion of pink on the temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves of luminous molten copper dashing against the brick wall. "I have done my work," said the rector. "And I my play," responded the girl, letting the ball drop into her lap and rock there from one knee to the other. "Papa, this fellow is the conqueror; I have made him dance thirty-five great leaps, and he has not yet fallen—wilfully. I let him go down and get breath just now. There lie all my dancers dead about me. They failed very speedily." "You cannot be forever playing, Ju." "That is why I play now, papa. When playtime is over I shall be in earnest indeed."

"Indeed?" the old man sighed.

Judith looked round, and was shocked to see how ill her father appeared to be. "Are you very tired, darling papa?" "Yes—overtired." "Have you been at your usual task?"