"You wouldn't say, would you, lad," he went on, "that _I_ was fair on
looks?"
An ungainly little man, this Moses Shoos: stout enough about the
chest, where a man's strength needs lie, big-shouldered, long-armed,
but scrawny and crooked in the legs and of an inconfident, stumbling
gait, prone to halt, musing vacantly as he went. He was bravely clad
upon his courtship: a suit of homespun from the _Quick as Wink_, given
in fair dealing, as to quality, by Tumm, the clerk, but with
reservations as to fit--everywhere (it seemed) unequal to its task, in
particular at the wrists and lean shanks. His visage was in the main
of a gravely philosophical cast, full at the forehead, pensive about
the eyes, restless-lipped, covered upon cheeks and chin with a close,
curly growth of yellow beard of a color with his hair: 'twas as
though, indeed, he carried a weight of thought--of concern and
helpless sympathy for the woes of folk. 'Twas set with a child's eyes:
of the unfaded blue, inquiring, unafraid, innocent, pathetic,
reflecting the emotion of the moment; quick, too, but in no way to
shame him, to fill with tears. He spoke in a colorless drawl, with
small variation of pitch: a soft, low voice, of clear timbre, with a
note of melancholy insistently sounding, whatever his mood. I watched
him stumble on; and I wondered concerning the love his mother had for
him, who got no other love, but did not wonder that he kept her close
within his heart, for here was no mystery.
"Eh, Dannie?" he reminded me, with a timid little smile, in which was
yet some glint of vanity.
"Oh, ay!" I answered; "you're fair on looks."
"Ay," said he, in fine simplicity; "mother used t' say so, too. She
'lowed," he continued, "that I was a sight stronger on looks 'n any
fool she ever knowed. It might have been on'y mother, but maybe not.
The lads, Dannie, out there on the grounds, is wonderful fond o'
jokin', an' _they_ says I've a power o' looks; but mother," he
concluded, his voice grown caressive and reverent, "wouldn't lie."
It gave me a familiar pang--ay, it _hurt_ me sore--to feel this loving
confidence vibrate upon the strings within me, and to know that the
echo in my heart was but an echo, after all, distant and blurred, of
the reality of love which was this fool's possession.
"An' she said that?" I asked, in poignant envy.
"Oh, ay!" he answered. "Afore she knowed I was a fool, lad, she 'lowed
she had the best kid t' Twist Tickle."
"An' after?" I demanded.
"It didn't seem t' make no difference, Dannie, not a jot."