I could not use it as such, however, at night
without discovery; for my mother carefully looked in every evening, to
see that my candle was out. But when my kind cough woke me, I rose, and
creeping like a mouse about the room--for my mother and sister slept in the
next chamber, and every sound was audible through the narrow partition--I
drew my darling books out from under a board of the floor, one end of which
I had gradually loosened at odd minutes, and with them a rushlight, earned
by running on messages, or by taking bits of work home, and finishing them
for my fellows.
No wonder that with this scanty rest, and this complicated exertion of
hands, eyes, and brain, followed by the long dreary day's work of the shop,
my health began to fail; my eyes grew weaker and weaker; my cough became
more acute; my appetite failed me daily. My mother noticed the change,
and questioned me about it, affectionately enough. But I durst not, alas!
tell the truth. It was not one offence, but the arrears of months of
disobedience which I should have had to confess; and so arose infinite
false excuses, and petty prevarications, which embittered and clogged still
more my already overtasked spirit.
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