Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/45

 did and said. It had moulded the expression of her continuance, just as time and weather will alter the features of a statue. Her eyes were small and gray, and she wore gold-rimmed spectacles, which, somehow, were becoming to her. I never saw her dressed in anything but black, and with a light lace cap on her gray hair. She was extremely fond of mc, and I knew it, and I'm afraid imposed upon it, though I loved her sincerely. At that time it appeared to mc perfectly natural that she should be fond of me; it was simply a part of the order of things ; it had always been so, and I couldn't have imagined anything else. It never even occurred to me that I had no claim upon her, except that which she herself had established; it never occurred to me that I might, in my relation to her, have been just like any of the other boys in the village. On the contrary, I looked upon Derryaghy quite as if it were a second, and certainly much my best-loved, home.

The "patience" failed, and Mrs. Carroll swept up the cards. "Shall I read to you?" she asked me, and, I having graciously given my permission, she took up "Huckleberry Finn." It was a book I rejoiced in, but I don't think Mrs. Carroll cared for it, I don't think she even found it funny. She spoke rather slowly, and it amused me infinitely to hear her gentle voice reproduce the talk of Huck, or Pap, or the King. . ..

That same day, after lunch, the nurse left. I was getting on very well, and was to be allowed up toward the end of the week. In the afternoon Mrs. Carroll had gone out, and I found myself alone. I went on with "Huck," but a chapter or two brought me to the end. I began another book, "Bevis," but my eyes grew tired, and I let it drop on the bed beside me. As I lay idle I was seized by a desire to get up. I resisted it for a few minutes, and then I slid into a sitting posture, with my legs hanging over the side of the bed. It struck me that they had grown absurdly