Read A House to Let for Free Online Page B

cot; but she skilfully threw that corner of the room into
darkness, and let the light fall on the sleeping Ailsie. The child had
thrown down the coverings, and her deformity, as she lay with her back to
them, was plainly visible through her slight night-gown. Her little
face, deprived of the lustre of her eyes, looked wan and pinched, and had
a pathetic expression in it, even as she slept. The poor father looked
and looked with hungry, wistful eyes, into which the big tears came
swelling up slowly, and dropped heavily down, as he stood trembling and
shaking all over. Norah was angry with herself for growing impatient of
the length of time that long lingering gaze lasted. She thought that she
waited for full half-an-hour before Frank stirred. And then—instead of
going away—he sank down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his face
in the clothes. Little Ailsie stirred uneasily. Norah pulled him up in
terror. She could afford no more time even for prayer in her extremity
of fear; for surely the next moment would bring her mistress home. She
took him forcibly by the arm; but, as he was going, his eye lighted on
the other bed: he stopped. Intelligence came back into his face. His
hands clenched.
    "His child?" he asked.
    "Her child," replied Norah. "God watches over him," said she
instinctively; for Frank's looks excited her fears, and she needed to
remind herself of the Protector of the helpless.
    "God has not watched over me," he said, in despair; his thoughts
apparently recoiling on his own desolate, deserted state. But Norah had
no time for pity. To-morrow she would be as compassionate as her heart
prompted. At length she guided him downstairs and shut the outer door
and bolted it—as if by bolts to keep out facts.
    Then she went back into the dining-room and effaced all traces of his
presence as far as she could. She went upstairs to the nursery and sate
there, her head on her hand, thinking what was to come of all this
misery. It seemed to her very long before they did return; yet it was
hardly eleven o'clock. She so heard the loud, hearty Lancashire voices
on the stairs; and, for the first time, she understood the contrast of
the desolation of the poor man who had so lately gone forth in lonely
despair.
    It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs. Openshaw come in, calmly
smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after her children.
    "Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?" she whispered to Norah.
    "Yes."
    Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes of
love. How little she dreamed who had looked on her last! Then she went
to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her countenance, but more
of pride. She took off her things, to go down to supper. Norah saw her
no more that night.
    Beside the door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened out of Mr.
and Mrs. Openshaw's room, in order that they might have the children more
immediately under their own eyes. Early the next summer morning Mrs.
Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call of "Mother! mother!" She
sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and went to her child. Ailsie was
only half awake, and in a not uncommon state of terror.
    "Who was he, mother? Tell me!"
    "Who, my darling? No one is here. You have been dreaming love. Waken
up quite. See, it is broad daylight."
    "Yes," said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother, said,
"but a man was here in the night, mother."
    "Nonsense, little goose. No man has ever come near you!"
    "Yes, he did. He stood there. Just by Norah. A man with hair and a
beard. And he knelt down and said his prayers. Norah knows he was here,
mother" (half angrily, as Mrs. Openshaw shook her head in smiling
incredulity).
    "Well! we will ask Norah when she comes," said Mrs. Openshaw, soothingly.
"But we won't talk any more about him now. It is not five o'clock; it is
too early for you to get up. Shall I fetch you a book and read to you?"
    "Don't leave me, mother," said the child,