of the time, at any rate.

"She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to
get her a blade o' grass she wanted. Nobody thought she'd marry him, but
she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she
didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--"

Mary gave a little involuntary jump.

"Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had just
remembered a French fairy story she had once read called "Riquet à la
Houppe." It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and
it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven.

"Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it made him queerer than
ever. He cares about nobody. He won't see people. Most of the time he
goes away, and when he is at Misselthwaite he shuts himself up in the
West Wing and won't let any one but Pitcher see him. Pitcher's an old
fellow, but he took care of him when he was a child and he knows his
ways."

It sounded like something in a book and it did not make Mary feel
cheerful. A house with a hundred rooms, nearly all shut up and with
their doors locked--a house on the edge of a moor--whatsoever a moor
was--sounded dreary. A man with a crooked back who shut himself up also!
She stared out of the window with her lips pinched together, and it
seemed quite natural that the rain should have begun to pour down in
gray slanting lines and splash and stream down the window-panes. If the
pretty wife had been alive she might have made things cheerful by being
something like her own mother and by running in and out and going to