Morrison, however, had very little to tell about Mrs. Day. She had come
home, and was living very much as she had lived before. The absence of
her children did not appear to make great difference in her dreary life.
The old labourer could not say that her husband treated her kindly or
unkindly. He was not willing to affirm that she was glad to be out of
the asylum, or that she was sorry. To the old man's imagination Mrs. Day
was not an interesting object; his interest had always been centred upon
the children. It was of them he talked chiefly now, telling of letters
that their father had received from them, and of the art by which he,
Morrison, had sometimes contrived to make the taciturn Day show him
their contents. The interest of passive benevolence which the young
medical student gave to Morrison's account of these children, who had
grown quite beyond the age when children are pretty and interesting,
would soon have been exhausted had the account been long; but it
happened that the old man had a more startling communication to make,
which cut short his gossip about his master's family.
He had been standing so far at the door of his little wooden house. His
old wife was moving at her household work within. Caius stood outside.
The house was a little back from the road in an open space; near it was
a pile of firewood, a saw-horse and chopping-block, with their
accompanying carpet of chips, and such pots, kettles, and household
utensils as Mrs.
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