Then each new day was an old friend to the boy. Each time the sun
rose, new hope rose with him in his heart. He came every morning fresh
from home, with a fresh promise. The boy read the promise in his great
shining, and believed it; gazed and rejoiced, and turned to his work.

But the hour arrived when his mistress could bear his presence no
longer. Some petty loss, I imagine, had befallen her. Nothing touched
her like the loss of money--the love of which is as dread a passion as
the love of drink, and more ruinous to the finer elements of the
nature. It was like the tearing out of her heart to Mrs. Goodenough to
lose a shilling. Her self-command forsook her, perhaps, in some such
moment of vexation; anyhow, she opened the sluices of her hate, and
overwhelmed him with it in the presence of her husband.

The farmer knew she was unfair, knew the orphan a good boy and a
diligent, knew there was nothing against him but the antipathy of his
wife. But, annoyed with her injustice, he was powerless to change her
heart. Since the boy came to live with them, he had had no pleasure in
his wife's society. She had always been moody and dissatisfied, but
since then had been unbearable. Constantly irritated with and by her
because of Clare, he had begun to regard him as the destroyer of his
peace, and to feel a grudge against him. He sat smouldering with
bodiless rage, and said nothing.

Clare too was silent,--for what could he say? Where is the wisdom that
can answer hatred? He carried to his friend Jonathan a heart heavy and
perplexed.

"Why does she hate me so, Jonathan?" he murmured.