Her house was two miles nearer
the shore than the school-building, but he preferred the walk in all
weathers and he liked the view of the water. Mrs. Devoe had never kept a
boarder before, her small income being amply sufficient for her small
wants, but she liked the master, he split her wood and his own, locked
the house up at night, made no trouble, paid his board, two dollars per
week, regularly in advance, never went out at night, often read to her in
the evening after her own eyes had given out, and would have been perfect
if he had allowed her to pile away his books and sweep his chamber every
Friday.
"But no man is perfect," she had sighed to Mrs. Rheid, "even my poor
husband would keep dinner waiting."
After a long, absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea, where
the waves were darkening in the twilight, he arose in haste, threw off
his wrapper, a gray merino affair, trimmed with quilted crimson silk,
that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago, and went to
the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair.
He did not study his features as Prudence had studied hers that morning;
he knew so little about his own face that he could scarcely distinguish a
good portrait of himself from a poor one; but Prudence knew it by heart.
It was a thin, delicate face, marred with much thought, the features not
large, and finely cut, with deep set eyes as black as midnight, and, when
they were neither grave nor stern, as soft as a dove's eyes; cheeks and
chin were closely shaven; his hair, a heavy black mass, was pushed back
from a brow already lined with thought or care, and worn somewhat long
behind the ears; there was no hardness in any line of the face, because
there was no hardness in the heart, there was sin and sorrow in the
world, but he believed that God is good.
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