So war of a novel kind came about between them. Mrs. Brigg was forced to
live and hear herself named thief, a distressing circumstance which she
could scarcely surmount with dignity, whatever she might manage in the
way of fortitude. Denial only armed forces for the attack. Battles were
numerous and violent. Cuckoo, who had in some directions no perception
at all of what was humiliating, took to measuring proportions of legs of
mutton going down to Hades and remeasuring them on their return. If the
inches did not tally, Mrs. Brigg knew it. Her soul revolted against such
surveyor's work on meat that her own hands had cooked. She called Cuckoo
names, and was called worse names in reply. But still the measurings went
on, and still Cuckoo spent her evenings within doors, sometimes without a
fire in the winter cold.
Mrs. Brigg therefore said within herself that Cuckoo had gone to the bad,
and beheld, with fancy's agitated eye, a time in the near future when not
only prequisites would be no more, but the very rent itself would be in
jeopardy. Fury sparkled in her heart.
Meanwhile the situation of Cuckoo above stairs was becoming at once
sordid and tragic. Starvation is always sordid. It exposes cheek-bones,
puts sharp points on elbows, writes ugliness over a face, and sets a
wolf crouching in the heart.
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