"Thank the Lord!" said Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "I thought he wouldn't fail."
She dropped the curtain, set the light on the table, knelt down and said
her prayers, rose up and undressed herself; and then this extraordinary
female went to bed and to sleep.
CHAPTER XX.
HUGH INGELOW KEEPS HIS PROMISE.
Mrs. Susan Sharpe was up with the lark, or, rather, with the sea-gulls
whirling and shrieking out on the tossing waters. The early morning sun
streamed in the little chamber; the wind wailed plaintively still, and
the dull tramp, tramp of the multitudinous waves kept up their ceaseless
refrain.
All was yet still in the lone farmhouse--no living thing was stirring,
not even the rats, that had held high carnival all night. Down in the
back yard and front garden, Tiger and Nero prowled about their beat,
surlily growling at the tossing trees, and were monarchs of all they
surveyed.
Mrs. Sharpe was not an imaginative person, luckily. She got up and made
her toilet, and splashed herself briskly in a basin of cold water. The
effect of these ablutions was singular--they effected a total cure of
her inflamed eyelids.
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