look decent? It was more than enough that she fed him! The shabbiness
of the beggarly creature was a consolation to her.

But Clare's toil in the open air, and his constant and willing
association with the animals, had begun to give him a bucolic
appearance. He grew a trifle browner, and showed here and there a
freckle. His health was splendid. Nothing seemed to hurt him. Hardship
was wholesome to him. To the eyes that hated him, and grudged the hire
of the mere food by which he grew, he seemed every day to enlarge
visibly. Already he gave promise of becoming a man of more than
ordinary strength and vigour. Possibly the animals gave him something.

What may have been his outlook and hope all this time, who shall tell!
He never grumbled, never showed sign of pain or unwillingness, gave
his mistress no reason for fault-finding. She found it hard even to
discover a pretext. She seemed always ready to strike him, but was
probably afraid to do so without provocation her husband would count
sufficient. Clare never showed discomfort, never even sighed except he
were alone. Chequered as his life had been, if ever he looked forward
to a fresh change, it was but as a far possibility in the slow current
of events. But he was constantly possessed with a large dim sense of
something that lay beyond, waiting for him; something toward which the
tide of things was with certainty drifting him, but with which he had
nothing more to do than wait. He did not see that to do the things
given him to do was the only preparation for whatever, in the dim
under-world of the future, might be preparing for him; but he did feel
that he must do his work. He did not then think much about duty. He
was actively inclined, had a strong feeling for doing a thing as it
ought to be done; and was thoroughly loyal to any one that seemed to
have a right over him. In this blind, enduring, vaguely hopeful way,