Abraham
Bradbury and De Courcy Donnelly set forth side by side, to meet it.
Out of it descended a tall, broad-shouldered figure--a man in the
prime of life, whose ripe, aggressive vitality gave his rigid
Quaker garb the air of a military undress. His blue eyes seemed to
laugh above the measured accents of his plain speech, and the close
crop of his hair could not hide its tendency to curl. A bearing
expressive of energy and the habit of command was not unusual in
the sect, strengthening, but not changing, its habitual mask; yet
in Henry Donnelly this bearing suggested--one could scarcely
explain why--a different experience. Dress and speech, in him,
expressed condescension rather than fraternal equality.
He carefully assisted his wife to alight, and De Courcy led the
horse to the hitching-shed. Susan Donnelly was a still blooming
woman of forty; her dress, of the plainest color, was yet of the
richest texture; and her round, gentle, almost timid face looked
forth like a girl's from the shadow of her scoop bonnet. While she
was greeting Abraham Bradbury, the two daughters, Sylvia and Alice,
who had been standing shyly by themselves on the edge of the group
of women, came forward.
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