She went back to her place and for some minutes sat trifling with
a pen. When she made a show of resuming work, it was evident that
she could no longer apply herself as before. Every now and then
she glanced at people who were passing; there were intervals when
she wholly lost herself in reverie. She was tired, and had even a
slight headache. When the hand of the clock pointed to half-past
three, she closed the volume from which she had been copying
extracts, and began to collect her papers.
A voice spoke close behind her.
'Where's your father, Miss Yule?'
The speaker was a man of sixty, short, stout, tonsured by the
hand of time. He had a broad, flabby face, the colour of an
ancient turnip, save where one of the cheeks was marked with a
mulberry stain; his eyes, grey-orbed in a yellow setting, glared
with good-humoured inquisitiveness, and his mouth was that of the
confirmed gossip. For eyebrows he had two little patches of
reddish stubble; for moustache, what looked like a bit of
discoloured tow, and scraps of similar material hanging beneath
his creasy chin represented a beard.
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