“There we are,” said Caleb, falling back a step or two to better judge his work. “It’s a pity the whole front of this doll’s house opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it, now, and regular doors to go in at! But that’s the worst of my work, I’m always trying to make believe!”
“You are speaking quite softly. Are you tired, Father?”
“Tired?” echoed Caleb with a great burst of enthusiasm. “What should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What does it mean?”
To give greater force to his words, he checked himself in the middle of a yawn, and began to hum a song. He sang it with a pretended care-free manner that made his face look a thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful than before.
Just then Tackleton put his head in at the door. “What! You’re singing, are you?” he thundered. “Go it! I can’t sing!”
Nobody would have suspected that he could. He hadn’t a singing face by any means.
“I can’t afford to sing,” said Tackleton. “I’m glad you can. I hope you can afford to work, too. Hardly time for both, I should think.”
Caleb turned toward his daughter, and said in a low tone, “If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at me. Such a man to joke! You’d think, if you didn’t know him, he was in earnest--wouldn’t you now?”
“The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to sing,” grumbled Tackleton. “What about the owl that can’t sing, and oughtn’t to sing, and will sing. Is there anything that he should be made to do?”
“The way he’s winking at me this moment!” whispered Caleb to his daughter. “Oh, my gracious!”
“Always merry and light-hearted with us!” cried the smiling Bertha.
“Oh, you’re there, are you?” answered Tackleton. “Poor idiot!”
He really did believe she was an idiot; and, strange to say, he thought her an idiot because she was fond of him.
“Well! being there, how are you?” said Tackleton, in his grudging way.
“Oh, well; quite well. And as happy as even you could wish me to be--as happy as you would make the whole world, if you could.”
“Poor idiot!” muttered Tackleton. “No gleam of reason! Not a gleam!”
The blind girl took his hand, and held it a moment in her own two hands, and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before releasing it. There was so much affectionate gratitude in the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than usual: