Wuthering Heights

them. And being really fully as inclined to laugh as scold, for I esteemed it all girlish vanity, I at length, relented in a measure, and asked,
    »If I consent to burn them, will you promise faithfully, neither to send, nor receive a letter again, nor a book, for I perceive you have sent him books, nor locks of hair, nor rings, nor playthings?«
    »We don't send playthings!« cried Catherine, her pride overcoming her shame.
    »Nor anything at all, then, my lady!« I said. »Unless you will, here I go.«
    »I promise, Ellen!« she cried catching my dress. »Oh, put them in the fire, do, do!«
    But when I proceeded to open a place with the poker, the sacrifice was too painful to be borne – She earnestly supplicated that I would spare her one or two.
    »One or two, Ellen, to keep for Linton's sake!«
    I unknotted the handkerchief, and commenced dropping them in from an angle, and the flame curled up the chimney.
    »I will have one, you cruel wretch!« she screamed, darting her hand into the fire, and drawing forth some half consumed fragments, at the expense of her fingers.
    »Very well – and I will have some to exhibit to papa!« I answered shaking back the rest into the bundle, and turning anew to the door.
    She emptied her blackened pieces into the flames, and motioned me to finish the immolation. It was done; I stirred up the ashes, and interred them under a shovel full of coals; and she mutely, and with a sense of intense injury, retired to her private apartment. I descended to tell my master that the young lady's qualm of sickness was almost gone, but I judged it best for her to lie down a while.
    She wouldn't dine; but she re-appeared at tea, pale and red about the eyes, and marvellously subdued in outward aspect.
    Next morning I answered the letter by a slip of paper inscribed, »Master Heathcliff is requested to send no more notes to Miss Linton as she will not receive them.« And, thenceforth the little boy came with vacant pockets.
     

 
Chapter XXII
    Summer drew to an end, and early Autumn – it was past Michaelmas, but the harvest was late that year, and a few of our fields were still uncleared.
    Mr. Linton and his daughter would frequently walk out among the reapers: at the carrying of the last sheaves, they stayed till dusk, and the evening happening to be chill and damp, my master caught a bad cold, that settling obstinately on his lungs, confined him indoors throughout the whole of the winter, nearly without intermission.
    Poor Cathy, frightened from her little romance, had been considerably sadder and duller since its abandonment: and her father insisted on her reading less, and taking more exercise. She had his companionship no longer; I esteemed it a duty to supply its lack, as much as possible, with mine; an inefficient substitute, for I could only spare two or three hours, from my numerous diurnal occupations, to follow her footsteps, and then, my society was obviously less desirable than his.
    On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November, a fresh watery afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered leaves, and the cold, blue sky was half hidden by clouds, dark grey streamers, rapidly mounting from the west, and boding abundant rain; I requested my young lady to forego her ramble because I was certain of showers. She refused; and I unwillingly donned a cloak, and took my umbrella to accompany her on a stroll to the bottom of the park; a formal walk which she generally affected if low-spirited; and that she invariably was when Mr. Edgar had been worse than ordinary; a thing never known from his confession, but guessed both by her and me from his increased silence, and the melancholy of his countenance.
    She went sadly on; there was no running or bounding now; though the chill wind might well have tempted her to a race. And often, from the side of my eye, I could detect her raising a hand, and brushing something off her cheek.
    I gazed round for a means of diverting her thoughts. On one side of the road rose a high, rough bank, where hazels and stunted oaks, with their roots half exposed, held uncertain tenour: the soil was too loose for the latter; and strong winds had blown some nearly horizontal. In summer, Miss Catherine delighted to climb along these trunks, and sit in the branches, swinging twenty feet above the ground; and I pleased with her agility, and her light, childish heart, still considered it proper to scold every time I caught her at such an