CHAPTER XXIV.[ToC]
Seen from afar off by the loving eyes of memory, the cows' horns are longer than they are close by.
The kitchen was old and smoky. Once on a time it had been regularly calcimined, twice a year, or three times, but it had been many years now since it had undergone this cleanly process.
Celia's welcome of Seth had been according to her nature, all the more hardened now by seclusion and poverty. She heard without emotion of the death of the child. It mattered little to her. She had never known him. Seth, come back to her a failure, a tramp, was deserving of scant courtesy. She meted it out to him as it seemed to her he deserved.
The miles he had travelled counted little. Since he had proven himself too great a failure to travel as men do, it was only just that he should work his way, sleep in fence corners, live on crusts and walk.
It was one of her theories that, given sufficient time, all men and animals sink to their level.
Who was Seth that he should be exempt from this law?
The thought occurred to her that he had come to her as a last recourse. That, unable to make his own living, he had come to share hers.