care. She had never thought of the hunchback s being married and she
was a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a
talkative woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of
passing some of the time, at any rate.
She was a sweet, pretty thing and he d have walked the world over to
get her a blade o grass she wanted. Nobody thought she d marry him,
but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
didn t she didn t, positively. When she died
Mary gave a little involuntary jump.
Oh! did she die! she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had
just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called Riquet a
la Houppe. It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess
and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.
Yes, she died, Mrs. Medlock answered. And it made him queerer than
ever. He cares about nobody. He won t see people. Most of the time he
goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the
West Wing and won t let anyone but Pitcher see him. Pitcher s an old
fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
ways.
It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
their doors locked a house on the edge of a moor whatsoever a moor
was sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also!
She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it
seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in
gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the
pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being
something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to
parties as she had done in frocks full of lace. But she was not there
any more.
You needn t expect to see him, because ten to one you won t, said
Mrs. Medlock. And you mustn t expect that there will be people to talk
to you. You ll have to play about and look after yourself. You ll be
told what rooms you can go into and what rooms you re to keep out of.
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