And I think you and I had
better come away.
It was quite dark before they had done talking,--quite dark; the
wood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea
stood till it grew cold, and no one drank it.
The old man got up at last, and Holmes led him to the library,
where he smoked every evening. He held Maggie, as he called her,
in his arms a long time, and wrung Holmes's hand. "God bless
you, Stephen!" he said,-- "this is a very happy Christmas-day to
me." And yet, sitting alone, the tears ran over his wrinkled
face as he smoked; and when his pipe went out, he did not know
it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the
shock, went up-stairs, and stayed there a long time. When she
came down, the old lady's blue eyes were tenderer, if that were
possible, and her face very pale. She went into the library and
asked her husband if she didn't prophesy this two years ago, and
he said she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered
the barbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty years ago. She
blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had heard
Joel's horse clattering up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she
would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be
a relief.
If Mrs. Howth's nerves had been weak, she might have supposed
that free-born serving- man seized with sudden insanity, from the
sight that met her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on
the dresser, was flung contemptuously on the ashes; a horrible
cloud of burning grease rushed from a dirty pint-pot on the
table, and before this Joel was capering and snorting like some
red-headed Hottentot before his fetich, occasionally sticking his
fingers into the nauseous stuff, and snuffing it up as if it were
roses.
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