There was something delightfully
homelike and familiar in this sharing of simple duties.
Deleah, returned to the sitting-room where she sat to fill his cup and to
cut him bread-and-butter, was as lovely a vision as any man could desire
to see at his board. Pleasantly and gaily she chattered, waiting on him
with her dainty hands. He, tongue-tied, answering little, embarrassed and
ill at ease in that sweet society.
For a year and a half he had lived in the dingy house above the shop in
Bridge Street. He had for eighteen months enjoyed that propinquity, that
familiar intercourse, which is all that is necessary to make many an ugly
woman beautiful in the eyes of the man in enjoyment of her society. It is
small wonder then, if the poor Manchester man exaggerated in his own mind
those unusual charms which Deleah incontestably possessed.
A year and a half! And in all that time he could never recall an occasion
when he had been left for any length of time alone with Deleah, before. It
was Bessie who had constituted herself his especial friend, had seized on
him, talked to him, made confidences to him, and satisfied herself it was
his wish to talk to her. Deleah, he knew, had looked on him as Bessie's
property.
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