" And that was the
last of him. She heard him chuckling all down the passage; but long
before his fly had reached Ullerton he had left off doing that and was
moulting again.
It rained that day in Somersetshire, a steady, hopeless rain that
soaked many a leaf off the trees before its time and made the year
look suddenly quite old. From the windows of Creeper Cottage you could
see the water running in rivulets down the hill into the deserted
village, and wreaths of mist hanging about the downs beyond. The
dripping tombstone that blocked Priscilla's window grew danker and
blacker as the day went by. The fires in the cottage burnt badly, for
the wood had somehow got wet. The oilcloth and the wall-papers looked
very dismal in the grey daylight. Rain came in underneath the two
front doors and made puddles that nobody wiped away.
Priscilla had got up very late, after a night spent staring into the
darkness, and then had sent for Fritzing and told him what Robin had
done. The unhappy man's horror will be easily imagined. She was in bed
the night before when he came in, quite cured of her hunger and only
wanting to be alone with her wrath.
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