Читать книгу Charles Dickens: Christmas Books and Stories онлайн

227 страница из 262

So he sat musing, and repeating the last words, until he woke again, and rose.

‘You won’t take it, Margaret?’

She shook her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to leave her.

‘Good night, Margaret.’

‘Good night!’

He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick and rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In the next he went as he had come. Nor did this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement.

In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg’s work must be done. She sat down to her task, and plied it. Night, midnight. Still she worked.

She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at intervals to mend it. The Chimes rang half-past twelve while she was thus engaged; and when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the door. Before she could so much as wonder who was there, at that unusual hour, it opened.