Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/119

the curious from meddling with his tools, went to the door and looked out. He leaned against his dirty casement and watched the village street as it lay in the afternoon light. He looked and looked, apparently at nothing. Every person who passed out of the door of the Grand delivered a little shock, and, an instant later, a little disappointment to the graying stoop-shouldered man who stood motionless in the door of the jeweller's shop. He waited but for Nessie's pleasant figure to fall upon his eyes. He knew she would not so much as glance around at him as she went; she never did. But there was something warming to the jeweller in the mere view of Nessie, as if the sun shone upon him. The fact that within three hours he would call on her, talk to her, gaze on her to his fill, all that had no reference to this immediate craving. He must see her at this very moment. So he stood looking and looking with the demented patience of a lover, afraid to remove his eyes for a moment from the stodgy entrance of the Grand lest he miss her altogether.

Presently it became apparent even to Belshue that he must have come to the door too late. He glanced into his shop to verify this. Beside his desk stood a large board on which were hung more than a score of watches which he was regulating. The hands of all these watches, with a unanimity uncommon among timepieces, stood at precisely twelve minutes after five. So he had missed her. Nessie always left the Grand before five. That was the hour set for her departure, and like all girl employees in all businesses, she watched the clock and left the Grand on the dot.

Mr. Belshue turned back into his shop and stood by the rail looking at the brace which held the tiny gold hand of the Swiss watch ready for soldering. He had no heart to return to his work. He looked again at the boardful of watches as if somehow they had tricked him. The round-faced chronometers returned his stare impassively. In the silence of the shop their many tickings filled his ears as with the flight of numberless tiny feet. As he listened to it with fancies tuned to disappointment, it sounded as if Time might