Instinct seemed to say that from them and
through them should come an influence sufficiently potent to resist
temptation, however tremendous. He felt so proud of the boy. Billy was
never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened,
holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features
and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already--a real little
man. Dale took his son's hand in his, took Billy with him into the
granary, the hay loft, or across the fields, cut bits of willow and
showed how to make a whistle, took a hedge sparrow's nest and blew the
eggs; and the boy was proud and happy in such noble society, but he
could not exorcise the evil spell for his grand companion.
Nor could Rachel give freedom. Dale embraced his daughter with the
truest paternal fervor, pumping up sweet clean love from deep
unsullied wells, thinking honestly and as of old so long as she stood
by his side. At such moments he forced himself to imagine a man
playing the fool with Rachel, and immediately there came a full normal
explosion of parental rage; and he knew, without the possibility of
doubt, that such a man had better never have been born than encounter
Rachel's father. But these imaginations could not help him.
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