woman said, imitating the other woman’s voice with a sneering and viperous dislike—“’I don’t know where it comes from unless it’s some of that common Pentland blood comin’out in him’—'Now you listen to me,’I says; oh, I looked her in the eye, you know”—here the woman looked at her daughter with the straight steady stare of her worn brown eyes, illustrating her speech with the loose and powerful gesture of the half-clasped finger-pointing hand—“’you listen to me. I don’t know where that child gets his laugh,’I says,’but you can bet your bottom dollar that he never got it from his father—or any other Pentland that I ever heard of—for none of them ever laughed that way—Will, or Jim, or Sam, or George, or Ed, or Father, or even Uncle Bacchus,’I said—’no, nor old Bill Pentland either, who was that child’s great-grandfather—for I’ve seen an’heard’em all,’I says.’And as for this common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett’—oh, I guess I talked to her pretty straight, you know,” she said with a little bitter smile, and the short, powerful, and convulsive tremor of her strong pursed lips—“’as for that common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett,’I says,’I never heard of that either—for we stood high in the community,’I says,’and we all felt that Will was lowerin’himself when he married a Creasman!’”
“Oh, you didn’t say that, Mama, surely not,” the young woman said with a hoarse, protesting, and yet abstracted laugh, continuing to survey the people on the platform with a bemused and meditative curiosity, and stroking her big chin thoughtfully as she looked at them, pausing from time to time to grin in a comical and rather formal manner, bow graciously and murmur:
“How-do-you-do? ah-hah! How-do-you-do, Mrs. Willis?”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” Again the great laugh of empty animal good nature burst out across the station platform, and this time George Pentland turned from the group of which he was a member and looked vacantly around him, his teeth bared with savage joy, as, with two brown fingers of his strong left hand, he dug vigorously into the muscular surface of his hard thigh. It was an animal reflex, instinctive and unconscious, habitual to him in moments of strong mirth.
He was a powerful and handsome young man in his early thirties, with coal-black hair, a strong thick neck, powerful shoulders, and the bull vitality of the athlete. He had a red, sensual, curiously animal and passionate face, and when he laughed his great guffaw, his red lips were bared over two rows of teeth that were white and regular and solid as ivory.
