Wuthering Heights

and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending,
    What, done already?«
    »On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners!
    ›You forget you have a master here,‹ says the tyrant. ›I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by; I heard him snap his fingers.‹
    Frances pulled his hair heartily; and then went and seated herself on her husband's knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour – foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of.
    We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain; when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handy work, boxes my ears, and croaks:
    ›T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath nut oe'red, und t' sahnd uh't gospel still i' yer lugs, and yah darr be laiking! shame on ye! sit ye dahn, ill childer! they's good books eneugh if ye'll read 'em; sit ye dahn, and think uh yer sowls!‹
    Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive, from the far-off fire, a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us.
    I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book.
    Heathcliff kicked his to the same place.
    Then there was a hubbub!
    ›Maister Hindley!‹ shouted our chaplain. ›Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy's riven th' back off »Th' Helmet uh Salvation,« un' Heathcliff's pawsed his fit intuh t' first part uh »T' Brooad Way to Destruction!« It's fair flaysome ut yah let 'em goa on this gait. Ech! th' owd man ud uh laced 'em properly – bud he's goan!‹
    Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, ›owd Nick‹ would fetch us as sure as we were living; and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent.
    I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient and proposes that we should appropriate the dairy woman's cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion – and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophesy verified – we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.«
     
    I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject; she waxed lachrymose.
    »How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!« she wrote. »My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow; and still I can't give over. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.
    He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place –«
     
    I began to nod drowsily over the dim page; my eye wandered from manuscript to print. I saw a red ornamented title ... »Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy First. A Pious Discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabes Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.« And while I was, half consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabes Branderham would make of his subject, I sank back in bed, and fell asleep.
    Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! what else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night? I don't remember another that I can at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering.
    I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. The snow lay yards deep in our road; and, as we floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim's staff: telling me I could never get into the house