Free Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Page B

watched anxiously their meeting, thinking it would enable them to judge, in some measure, what grounds they had for hoping to succeed in separating the two friends.
    Heathcliff was hard to discover, at first – If he were careless, and uncared for, before Catherine's absence, he had been ten times more so, since.
    Nobody, but I even did him the kindness to call him a dirty boy, and bid him wash himself, once a week; and children of his age, seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three months' service, in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair; the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded. He might well skulk behind the settle, on beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house, instead of a rough-headed counterpart to himself, as he expected.
    »Is Heathcliff not here?« she demanded pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing, and staying in doors.
    »Heathcliff you may come forward,« cried Mr. Hindley enjoying his discomfiture and gratified to see what a forbidding young blackguard he would be compelled to present himself. »You may come and wish Miss Catherine welcome, like the other servants.«
    Cathy, catching a glimpse of her friend in his concealment, flew to embrace him, she bestowed seven or eight kisses on his cheek within the second, and, then, stopped, and drawing back, burst into a laugh, exclaiming,
    »Why, how very black and cross you look! and how – how funny and grim! But that's because I'm used to Edgar, and Isabella Linton. Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me?«
    She had some reason to put the question, for shame, and pride threw double gloom over his countenance, and kept him immoveable.
    »Shake hands, Heathcliff,« said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly; »once in a way, that is permitted.«
    »I shall not!« replied the boy finding his tongue at last, »I shall not stand to be laughed at, I shall not bear it!«
    And he would have broken from the circle, but Miss Cathy seized him again.
    »I did not mean to laugh at you,« she said, »I could not hinder myself, Heathcliff, shake hands, at least! What are you sulky for? It was only that you looked odd – If you wash your face, and brush your hair it will be all right. But you are so dirty!«
    She gazed concernedly at the dusky fingers she held in her own, and also at her dress which she feared had gained no embellishment from its contact with his.
    »You needn't have touched me!« He answered, following her eye and snatching away his hand. »I shall be as dirty as I please, and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty.«
    With that he dashed head foremost out of the room, amid the merriment of the master and mistress, and to the serious disturbance of Catherine who could not comprehend how her remarks should have produced such an exhibition of bad temper.
    After playing lady's maid to the new comer, and putting my cakes in the oven, and making the house and kitchen cheerful with great fires befitting Christmas eve, I prepared to sit down and amuse myself by singing carols, all alone; regardless of Joseph's affirmations that he considered the merry tunes I chose as next door to songs.
    He had retired to private prayer in his chamber, and Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw were engaging Missy's attention by sundry gay trifles bought for her to present to the little Lintons, as an acknowledgment of their kindness.
    They had invited them to spend the morrow at Wuthering Heights, and the invitation had been accepted, on one condition: Mrs. Linton begged that her darlings might be kept carefully apart from that »naughty, swearing boy.«
    Under these circumstances I remained solitary. I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices; and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper; and, above all, the speckless purity of my particular