Cuckoo was neither reading nor working. She was
simply staring straight before her, without definite expression. Her
face indeed wore a quite singularly blank look and her mouth was slightly
open. Her feet, stuck out before her, rested on the edge of the fender,
shoeless, and both her general appearance and attitude betokened a
complete absence of self-consciousness, and that lack of expectation of
any immediate event which is often dubbed stupidity. The lady of the
feathers sitting in the horsehair-covered chair in the cheap sitting-room
with the folding doors looked indeed stupid, pale, and heavy. Fatigue lay
in the shadows of her eyes, but something more than ordinary fatigue
hovered round her parted lips and spoke in her posture. A dull weariness,
in which the mind took part with the body, held her in numbing captivity.
She had only broken through it in some hours to repulse the anxious
effort of Jessie to scramble into the nest of her lap. That slap given,
she had again relapsed without a struggle into this waking sleep.
The sun came out with a sudden violence, and an organ began to play a
frisky tune in the street. Jessie whined and whimpered, formed her mouth
into the shape of an O, and, throwing up her head, emitted a vague and
smothered howl.
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