Something that shone in the eyes of the school teacher, when she struggled
with him for the possession of the plate, kept calling to him and he got
up and went to the window. The clouds had all gone out of the sky and the
night was clear. At the window next his own sat Rose McCoy. She was dressed
in a night gown and was looking away along Turner's Pike to the place where
George Pike the station master lived with his wife. Without giving himself
time to think, Hugh knelt on the floor and with his long arm reached across
the space between the two windows. His fingers had almost touched the back
of the woman's head and ached to play in the mass of red hair that fell
down over her shoulders, when again self-consciousness overcame him. He
drew his arm quickly back and stood upright in the room. His head banged
against the ceiling and he heard the window of the room next door go softly
down. With a conscious effort he took himself in hand. "She's a good woman.
Remember, she's a good woman," he whispered to himself, and when he got
again into his bed he refused to let his mind linger on the thoughts of
the school teacher, but compelled them to turn to the unsolved problems he
still had to face before he could complete his hay-loading apparatus. "You
tend to your business and don't be going off on that road any more," he
said, as though speaking to another person. "Remember she's a good woman
and you haven't the right.
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