My
anxiety had become nearly insupportable. All night I walked up and
down my bedroom, like a caged animal, cursing Superstition, cursing
Convention, and all the other follies that had combined to destroy
her. It was not till the next day that the true state of the case was
made known to me in the following manner: At the end of the town
lived the widow of Shales, the tailor. Winifred and I had often, in
our childish days, stood and watched old Shales, sitting cross-legged
on a board in the window, at his work, when Winifred would whisper to
me, 'How nice it must be to be a tailor!'
As I passed this shop I now saw that on the same board was sitting a
person in whom Winifred had taken still stronger interest. This was a
diminutive imitation of the deceased, in the person of his
hump-backed son, a little man of about twenty-four, who might, as far
as appearance went, have been any age from twenty to eighty, with a
pale anxious face like his mother's. He was stitching at a coat with,
apparently, the same pair of scissors by his side that used to
delight us two children.
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