"Burns are serious things, I know. Miss Lavillotte, I began stroking for the furnaces here when I was eight years old. I think"--looking off in an impersonal manner, as if reckoning a problem,--"that from that time on to fourteen, at least, I was never without burns on face, hands or arms. Probably I grew used to them."
Joyce looked up quickly. He was quite serious now, and seemed almost to have forgotten the subject up between them. Joyce felt suddenly very young, and she devoutly wished she had never consented to this detestable visit with her manager. Then pride came to her aid, and she asked deliberately, with an intrepid air,
"I doubt if people ever really get used to pain. Do you think the doctor will be through with that boy in half an hour?"
"Possibly. Of course I don't know the extent of his injuries."
"Let us hurry then," doubling her pace. "I shall have none too much time before the 2.39 train, and we must take that, as I have an engagement in the city. Ellen, am I tiring you?"
The maid smiled grimly. She understood this as an overture for peace, knowing her young mistress was never so thoughtful and conciliatory as just after being most unreasonable and peremptory. She rightly conjectured that the girl was already ashamed of her sharpness, and wished to make amends in some way. Mr. Dalton's slower comprehension of womankind was bewildered by these rapid changes. Having inwardly decided, in spite of Ellen's favorable testimony, that here was a young lady who had been allowed her own way more than was good for her, he was left stranded on the shore of his own conjectures by her present tone. He had mentally dubbed her a sort of princess, determined to have her say in everything; now she seemed a child eager to be led by any one. But Ellen was answering with fine sarcasm.
"I might walk faster, too, if I hadn't got 'most paralyzed on them wooden chairs. But never mind! Keep right on--I guess I can manage to get there, if I try hard."
Fortunately for her legs and temper, they stopped presently before a rather ornate cottage, with several peaks and a turret, which was set down in the midst of a square lawn that looked unnaturally green to Joyce in comparison with the bareness all about it. Grass, except in long scraggy tufts here and there, or in sparse blades in some odd fence corner, was not prevalent at the Works. Joyce liked all that was trim and beautiful, but just now this house and lawn, so new and snug and smiling, jarred upon her like a discordant note. What business had he to live where fresh paint and large windows and broad verandas should mock at the poverty and squalor of all the other houses? She felt it almost as a personal insult.