The rattling of china and silver might be discerned in the ancient
dining-room, at morn and night. The occupant probably dined elsewhere,
but the regularity of these meals was unmistakable.
I recognized, faintly, the step of Bainrothe on the stairway,
distinguishing it readily from any other, as it passed and repassed my
hidden door.
October had now set in, with a chilliness unusual to that bland season,
and I asked for and obtained permission to have a fire kindled in the
wide and gloomy grate of my chamber, hitherto unused by me.
About this household flame, Ernie, Mrs. Clayton, and I gathered
harmoniously; she with her unfailing work-basket, I with book or pencil,
the baby with his blocks and dominoes and painted pictures--the only
happy and truly industrious spirit of the group. My true work was
done--else might it never have been completed.
The presence of fire was indispensable to Mrs. Clayton, and, from the
time of its first lighting, she left me but seldom alone. Her rheumatic
limbs needed the solace that I had no heart to grudge her, distasteful
as she was to me, and becoming more so day by day--false as I now knew
her to be--false at heart.
How hatred grows, when we once admit the germ--not, like love,
parasitically--but strong, stanch, stern, alone throwing down fresh
roots, even hour by hour, like the banyan, monarch of the Eastern
forest.
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