He never
hired a nurse--the father had sold the lady's maid quite out of sight;
so he brought her through all the little ills and around all the sharp
corners of baby-life and childhood, without a human hand to help him,
until one evening, having persistently shut his eyes to it for weeks and
months, like one trying to sleep in the sunshine, he awoke to the
realization that she was a woman. It was a smoky one in November, the
first cool day of autumn. The sunset was dimmed by the smoke of burning
prairies, the air was full of the ashes of grass and reeds, ragged
urchins were lugging home sticks of cordwood, and when a bit of coal
fell from a cart in front of Kookoo's old house, a child was boxed half
across the street and robbed of the booty by a _blanchisseuse de fin_
from over the way.
The old man came home quite steady. He mounted the stairs smartly
without stopping to rest, went with a step unusually light and quiet to
his chamber and sat by the window opening upon the rusty balcony.
It was a small room, sadly changed from what it had been in old times;
but then so was 'Sieur George.
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