“She does not seem so amiable,” I thought, “as Mrs. Dean would persuade me to believe.  She’s a beauty, it is true, but not an angel.”

I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped Mrs. Dean’s note on her knee unnoticed by Hareton.  But she asked aloud, “What is that?” and chucked it off.

“A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange,” I answered.  She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but Hareton beat her.  He seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first; but later he pulled out the letter, and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could.  Catherine perused it eagerly, and then asked, “Does Ellen like you?”

“Yes, very well,” I replied hesitatingly.

Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was now Heathcliff had taken her books away.

When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.

* * * * *

Next September, when going north for shooting, a sudden impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for the tenancy had not yet expired.  When I reached the Grange before sunset I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.

“Is Mrs. Dean within?” I demanded.

“Mistress Dean?  Nay!” she answered.  “She doesn’t bide here; shoo’s up at th’ Heights.”

“Are you housekeeper, then?”

“Eea, aw keep th’ house,” she replied.

“Well, I’m Mr. Lockwood, the master.  Are there any rooms to lodge me in, I wonder?  I wish to stay all night.”

“T’ maister!” she cried in astonishment.  “Yah sud ha’ sent word.  They’s nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t’ place!”

Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling.  On reaching it I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock—­it yielded to my hand.  “This is an improvement,” I thought.  I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.

“Con-trary!” said a voice as sweet as a silver bell “That for the third time, you dunce!  I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Contrary, then,” answered another in deep but softened tones.  “And now kiss me for minding so well.”

The male speaker was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a table, having a book before him.  His handsome features glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a small white hand over his shoulder.  So, not to interrupt Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.