Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

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That night Miss Keith, buoyed by the doctor’s talk and a man’s recent presence in the house, albeit it was temporary, was in an exalted mood and trod on air. Already she saw visions of the future, and kept saying to herself, “I will do and see so and so when I go to Boston.”

When she lit her candle and went upstairs, she took the First Cause from the mantel and bore him with her. Where should she put him? Her dresser seemed too intimate a place; the spare room album, too remote. Finally she placed the photograph against the puffs and quills of the pillow-shams of the best room bed and then fled to her own chamber, where she blew out the candle and undressed in the dark, or, rather, by the half moonlight, saying aloud, as she got into bed, “Thank fortune for one thing, I’ve kept my own hair and teeth, and such as I am there is nothing of me that takes off.” And though the remark was apropos of nothing in particular, a wave of hot colour covered her face at the words, and she buried her head in her pillow and tried to sleep. This she didn’t do, for Tatters, whom she had utterly forgotten for the first time, and shut out when she closed the door, resented being forced to sleep out on the porch at such a frosty time, and at intervals throughout the night bayed dismally at the moon, thereby calling to her mind an old ballad of chilling and ominous portent.