Get you to bed. An', mind, the bwoat
at the steps by half-past five to-morrer."
"Ay, ay, faither."
Then Tom vanished, his parents went to their rest, and the cottage on the
cliff slept within the music of the sea, its thatch all silver-bright under
a summer moon.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A BARGAIN FOR MRS. TREGENZA
To the superficial eye dead hopes leave ugly traces; viewed more
inquiringly the cryptic significance of them appears; and that is often
beautiful. Joan's soul looked out of her blue eyes now. Seen thoughtfully
her beauty was refined and exalted to an exquisite perfection; but the
unintelligent observer had simply pronounced her pale and thin. The event
which first promised to destroy the new-spun gossamers of a religious faith
and break them even on the day of their creation, in reality acted
otherwise. For Joan, Joe's letter was like a window opening upon a hopeless
dawn; and her helplessness before this spectacle of the future threw the
girl upon religion--not as a sure rock in the storm of her life, but as a
straw to the hand of the drowning. The world had nothing else left in it
for her. She, to whom sunshine and happiness were the breath of life, she
who had envied butterflies their joyous being, now stood before a future
all uphill and gray, lonely and loveless. As yet but the dawn of affection
for the unborn child lightened her mind. Thought upon that subject went
hand in hand with fear of pain.
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