He hushed up the children, who were already, of their own accord, walking on tiptoe and whispering, and he himself even went so far as to refrain from the usual incense of his pipe, having observed that the stranger, who seemed to be of a very delicate organization, had seemed sensible of the disagreeable effect on the atmosphere of the room. The restraint lasted, however, only till (in the course of the day) crusty Hannah had fitted up a little bedroom on the opposite side of the entry, to which she and the grim Doctor moved the stranger, who, though tall, they observed was of no great weight and substance,--the lightest man, the Doctor averred, for his size, that ever he had handled.
The grim Doctor's curiosity was somewhat piqued by what he could see of the schoolmaster's character, and he was desirous of finding out what sort of a life such a man could have led in a world which he himself had found so rough a one; through what difficulties he had reached middle age without absolutely vanishing away in his contact with more positive substances than himself; how the world had given him a subsistence, if indeed he recognized anything more dense than fragrance, like a certain people whom Pliny mentioned in Africa,--a point, in fact, which the grim Doctor denied, his performance at table being inappreciable, and confined, at least almost entirely, to a dish of boiled rice, which crusty Hannah set before him, preparing it, it might be, with a sympathy of her East Indian part towards him.
"They existed once: perhaps are still recoverable by search," said the schoolmaster. "My father knew of them."
This latter sound appealed to something within the simple schoolmaster, who had been witnessing the demeanor of the Doctor, like a being looking from another sphere into the trouble of the mortal one; a being incapable of passion, observing the mute, hard struggle of one in its grasp.
"He has overslept himself for once," quoth Doctor Grim gruffly; "a strange thing, too, for a man whose victuals and drink are so light as the schoolmaster's. The fiend take me if I thought he had mortal mould enough in him ever to go to sleep at all; though he is but a kind of dream-stuff in his widest-awake state. Hannah, you bronze jade, call the schoolmaster to come to breakfast."
"Ah, ahah!" said the Doctor, laying down his pipe, and looking earnestly at the stranger; not kindly nor genially, but rather with a lurid glance of suspicion out of those red eyes of his, but no longer with a desire to escape an intruder; rather as one who meant to clutch him. "Explain your meaning, sir, at once."
"I again ask pardon," said Mr. Hammond. "I am fond of children; and the boy has a singularly fine countenance; not in the least English. The true American face, no doubt. As to this sweet little girl, she impresses me with a vague resemblance to some person I have seen. Hers I should deem an English face."