Читать книгу Jewel sowers. A novel онлайн

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The last week of her aunt’s illness was very strange and unreal to Rosalie—strange and unreal when, after the second funeral within a year, she sat alone in the little empty four-roomed storey.

Her hands, roughened, though not coarsened, by hard work, were clasped between her knees. Her head had sunk forward on her breast, her open eyes saw nothing.

Vaguely she hoped that she might be the next to go, thought of her prayer for speech, and dashed the bitter tears from her dull eyes. What of her prayer? Perhaps to the Serpent it sounded nothing more than clamorous presumption and self-will.

Again she had been offered the shelter of the Home for Deaf and Dumb by those who recognised her sad position. Was she ungrateful? Many poor waifs there were, she knew, in that great city, with none to help them to the scantiest food and shelter.

“I can’t believe you’re either kind or just, and I won’t pray to you any more!” she cried inwardly, jumping up fiercely at last. “I wasn’t made to be without a tongue. I wasn’t! I wasn’t! You haven’t the power to give me one; that’s what it really is.”