Fog and frost had taken a strong grip, too, upon the heart of the lady
of the feathers. Somewhere about eleven o'clock in the morning she had
stirred wearily in her bed, had stretched out her arms to the stagnant
air of the room, and crouched up on her pillow in a grotesque hump. For a
while the hump remained motionless. Then Cuckoo rolled round and extended
a bare thin leg to test the atmosphere. The leg was quickly withdrawn,
the atmosphere having been evidently tried in the balance and found
wanting. Cuckoo's bell rang, and Mrs. Brigg was called for tea and toast,
while once more the hump decorated the upper part of the disordered bed.
Jessie, awakened in her basket at the foot of the bed, joined the hump,
whining a greeting, and wriggling furiously in an effort to tunnel her
way to the ultimate depths of sheets and blankets. Then Mrs. Brigg, of
yellowish and bleak aspect, beneath a tumbled appurtenance that she
called a cap, appeared with a tray.
"Going to stop abed?" she asked, in a husky voice, in which the smuts
seemed floating.
"Yes. What's there to get up for?" Cuckoo groaned.
"Nothun' as I know of."
And Mrs. Brigg was gone about her business.
All the morning Cuckoo lay staring at the blank square of the window, and
Jessie snored under the blankets.
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