Wuthering Heights

shouldn't lie till ten. There's the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.«
    »Nevertheless, Mrs. Dean, resume your chair; because to-morrow I intend lengthening the night till afternoon. I prognosticate for myself an obstinate cold, at least.«
    »I hope not, sir. Well, you must allow me to leap over some three years; during that space, Mrs. Earnshaw –«
    »No, no, I'll allow nothing of the sort! Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss's neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?«
    »A terribly lazy mood, I should say.«
    »On the contrary, a tiresomely active one. It is mine, at present, and, therefore, continue minutely. I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They
do
live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year's standing – one state resembles setting a hungry man down to a single dish on which he may concentrate his entire appetite, and do it justice – the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks; he can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from the whole; but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance.«
    »Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us,« observed Mrs. Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech.
    »Excuse me,« I responded; »you, my good friend, are a striking evidence against that assertion. Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners that I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.«
    Mrs. Dean laughed.
    »I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind of body,« she said; »not exactly from living among the hills, and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year's end to year's end: but I have undergone sharp discipline which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also; unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French – and those I know one from another, it is as much as you can expect of a poor man's daughter.
    However, if I am to follow my story in true gossip's fashion, I had better go on; and instead of leaping three years, I will be content to pass to the next summer – the summer of 1778, that is, nearly twenty-three years ago.«
     
     
Chapter VIII
    On the morning of a fine June day, my first bonny little nursling, and the last of the ancient Earnshaw stock was born.
    We were busy with the hay in a far away field, when the girl that usually brought our breakfasts came running, an hour too soon, across the meadow and up the lane, calling me as she ran.
    »Oh, such a grand bairn!« she panted out. »The finest lad that ever breathed! But the doctor says missis must go; he says she's been in a consumption these many months. I heard him tell Mr. Hindley – and now she has nothing to keep her, and she'll be dead before winter. You must come home directly. You're to nurse it, Nelly – to feed it with sugar and milk, and take care of it, day and night – I wish I were you, because it will be all yours when there is no missis!«
    »But is she very ill?« I asked, flinging down my rake, and tying my bonnet.
    »I guess she is; yet she looks bravely,« replied the girl, »and she talks as if she thought of living to see it grow a man. She's out of her head for joy, it's such a beauty! If I were her I'm certain I should not die. I should get better at the bare sight of it, in spite of Kenneth. I was fairly mad at him. Dame Archer brought the cherub down to master, in the house, and his face just began to light up, then the old croaker steps forward,