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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
85
When
I
came
to
look
at
our
Ruin
by
the
full
lamplight
I
was
surprised
to
see
what
a
change
a
little
warm
water
and
a
comb
had
wrought
in
him.
He
came
to
the
table
uncertain,
blinking,
apologetic.
His
forehead,
I
saw,
was
really
impressive--high,
narrow
and
thin-skinned.
His
face
gave
one
somehow
the
impression
of
a
carving
once
full
of
significant
lines,
now
blurred
and
worn
as
though
Time,
having
first
marked
it
with
the
lines
of
character,
had
grown
discouraged
and
brushed
the
hand
of
forgetfulness
over
her
work.
He
had
peculiar
thin,
silky
hair
of
no
particular
colour,
with
a
certain
almost
childish
pathetic
waviness
around
the
ears
and
at
the
back
of
the
neck.
Something,
after
all,
about
the
man
aroused
one's
compassion.
I
don't
know
that
he
looked
dissipated,
and
surely
he
was
not
as
dirty
as
I
had
at
first
supposed.
Something
remained
that
suggested
a
care
for
himself
in
the
past.
It
was
not
dissipation,
I
decided;
it
was
rather
an
indefinable
looseness
and
weakness,
that
gave
one
alternately
the
feeling
I
had
first
experienced,
that
of
anger,
succeeded
by
the
compassion
that
one
feels
for
a
child.
To
Harriet,
when
she
had
once
seen
him,
he
was
all
child,
and
she
all
compassion.
We
disturbed
him
with
no
questions.
Harriet's
fundamental
quality
is
homeliness,
comfortableness.
Her
tea-kettle
seems
always
singing;
an
indefinable
tabbiness,
as
of
feather
cushions,
lurks
in
her
dining-room,
a
right
warmth
of
table
and
chairs,
indescribably
comfortable
at
the
end
of
a
chilly
day.
A
busy
good-smelling
steam
arises
from
all
her
dishes
at
once,
and
the
light
in
the
middle
of
the
table
is
of
a
redness
that
enthralls
the
human
soul.
As
for
Harriet
herself,
she
is
the
personification
of
comfort,
airy,
clean,
warm,
inexpressibly
wholesome.
And
never
in
the
world
is
she
so
engaging
as
when
she
ministers
to
a
man's
hunger.
Truthfully,
sometimes,
when
she
comes
to
me
out
of
the
dimmer
light
of
the
kitchen
to
the
radiance
of
the
table
with
a
plate
of
muffins,
it
is
as
though
she
and
the
muffins
were
a
part
of
each
other,
and
that
she
is
really
offering
some
of
herself.
And
down
in
my
heart
I
know
she
is
doing
just
that!
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