Vagrant impressions and associations of this childhood
strayed with quaint inconsequence across the field of his
preoccupied mind. The peculiar odour of the ancient book-shop
on the floor below remained like snuff in his nostrils.
Somewhere underneath, or in the wainscoting at the side,
he could hear the assiduous gnawing of a rat. Was it
the same rat, he wondered with a mental grin, that used
to keep him awake nights, in one of the rooms next to this,
with that same foolish noise, when he was a boy?
"I know you always say that," replied Louisa, impassively.
She was years older than her brother, but, without a trace
of artifice or intention, contrived to look the younger
of the two. Her thick hair, drawn simply from her temples
into a knot behind, was of that palest brown which
assimilates grey. Her face, long, plain, masculine in
contour and spirit, conveyed no message as to years.
Long and spare of figure, she sat upright in her
straight-backed chair, with her large, capable hands
on her knees.
"I believed in you as much as you'd let me," she went on,
indifferently, almost wearily. "But I don't see that it
mattered to you whether I did or didn't. You went your own
way: you did what you wanted to do. What had I to do
with it? I don't suppose I even knew what part of the
world you were in more than once in two or three years.
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