Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/210

 a boy, traipsin' about all t' day in't' wet, and niver takin' yer meals proper-like."

A faint smile flickered across his face. He was used to his landlady's scoldings.

"A child was drowned yesterday in the beck up at Beda Cottages. I had to go back there this afternoon to arrange about the funeral," he mumbled, half-apologetically.

Mrs. Parkin snorted defiantly, bustling round the table as she spread the cloth. Presently she broke out again:

"An' noo, ye set there lookin' as white as a bogle. Why don't ye go an' git them wet clothes off. Ye're fair wringin'."

He obeyed; though the effort to rise was great. He felt curiously cold: his teeth were clacking, and the warmth from the flames seemed delicious.

In his bedroom a dizziness caught him, and it was a moment before he could recognise the familiar objects. And he realised that he was ill, and looked at himself in the glass with a dull, scared expression. He struggled through his dressing however, and went back to his tea. But, though he had eaten nothing since the morning, he had no appetite; so, from sheer force of habit, he lit a pipe, wheeling his chair close to the fire.

And, as the heat penetrated him, his thoughts spun aimlessly round the day's events, till these gradually drifted into the background of his mind, as it were, and he and they seemed to have become altogether detached. His forehead was burning, and a drowsy, delicious sense of physical weakness was stealing over his limbs. He was going to be ill, he remembered; and it was with vague relief that he looked forward to the prospect of long days of monotonous inactivity, long days of repose from the daily routine of fatigue. The details of each day's work, the accomplishment of which, before, had appeared so indispensable, now, he felt in his