A rude instrument for combining the horse-hair, awls,
buttons, and thread, heaped on a small bench, showed that active work
had been but recently interrupted. A cheap earthenware ewer and basin
on the floor, and a pallet made of an open bale of horse-hair, on which
a ragged quilt and blanket were flung, indicated that the solitary
worker dwelt and slept beside his work.
The truth flashed upon the young girl's active brain, quickened by
seclusion and fed by solitary books. She read with keen eyes the
miserable secret of her father's strange guest in the poverty-stricken
walls, in the mute evidences of menial handicraft performed in
loneliness and privation, in this piteous adaptation of an accident to
save the conscious shame of premeditated toil. She knew now why he had
stammeringly refused to receive her father's offer to buy back the
goods he had given him; she knew now how hardly gained was the pittance
that paid his rent and supported his childish vanity and grotesque
pride. From a peg in the corner hung the familiar masquerade that hid
his poverty--the pearl-gray trousers, the black frock-coat, the tall
shining hat--in hideous contrast to the penury of his surroundings.
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