Wuthering Heights

elevation; but so that she knew there was no necessity for descending. From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing nothing except singing old songs – my nursery lore – to herself, or watching the birds, joint tenants, feed and entice their young ones to fly, or nestling with closed lids, half thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express.
    »Look, Miss!« I exclaimed, pointing to a nook under the roots of one twisted tree. »Winter is not here yet. There's a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of blue-bells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up, and pluck it to show to papa?«
    Cathy stared a long time at the lonely blossom trembling in its earthy shelter, and replied, at length –
    »No, I'll not touch it – but it looks melancholy, does it not, Ellen?«
    »Yes,« I observed, »about as starved and sackless as you – your cheeks are bloodless; let us take hold of hands and run. You're so low, I dare say I shall keep up with you.«
    »No,« she repeated, and continued sauntering on, pausing, at intervals, to muse over a bit of moss, or a tuft of blanched grass, or a fungus spreading its bright orange among the heaps of brown foliage; and, ever and anon, her hand was lifted to her averted face.
    »Catherine, why are you crying, love?« I asked, approaching and putting my arm over her shoulder. »You mustn't cry, because papa has a cold; be thankful it is nothing worse.«
    She now put no further restraint on her tears; her breath was stifled by sobs.
    »Oh, it
will
be something worse,« she said. »And what shall I do when papa and you leave me, and I am by myself? I can't forget your words, Ellen, they are always in my ear. How life will be changed, how dreary the world will be, when papa and you are dead.«
    »None can tell, whether you wont die before us,« I replied. »It's wrong to anticipate evil – we'll hope there are years and years to come before any of us go – master is young, and I am strong, and hardly forty-five. My mother lived till eighty, a canty dame to the last. And suppose Mr. Linton were spared till he saw sixty, that would be more years than you have counted, Miss. And would it not be foolish to mourn a calamity above twenty years beforehand?«
    »But Aunt Isabella was younger than papa,« she remarked, gazing up with timid hope to seek further consolation.
    »Aunt Isabella had not you and me to nurse her,« I replied. »She wasn't as happy as master; she hadn't as much to live for. All you need do, is to wait well on your father, and cheer him by letting him see you cheerful; and avoid giving him anxiety on any subject – mind that, Cathy! I'll not disguise, but you might kill him, if you were wild and reckless, and cherished a foolish, fanciful affection for the son of a person who would be glad to have him in his grave – and allowed him to discover that you fretted over the separation, he has judged it expedient to make.«
    »I fret about nothing on earth except papa's illness,« answered my companion. »I care for nothing in comparison with papa. And I'll never – never – oh, never, while I have my senses, do an act, or say a word to vex him. I love him better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by this – I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be – that proves I love him better than myself.«
    »Good words,« I replied. »But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.«
    As we talked, we neared a door that opened on the road: and my young lady, lightening into sunshine again, climbed up, and seated herself on the top of the wall, reaching over to gather some hips that bloomed scarlet on the summit branches of the wild rose trees, shadowing the highway side, the lower fruit had disappeared, but only birds could touch the upper, except from Cathy's present station.
    In stretching to pull them, her hat fell off; and as the door was locked, she proposed scrambling down to recover it. I bid her be cautious lest she got a fall, and she nimbly disappeared.
    But the return was no such easy matter; the stones were smooth and neatly cemented, and the rosebushes, and blackberry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending. I, like a fool, didn't recollect that till I heard her laughing, and exclaiming –
    »Ellen! you'll have to fetch the key, or else I