Bad Hugh - Page 63/277

"It's too confounded cold. I'll freeze to death, I tell you," he said,

as if arguing the point with some unseen presence. "Get into bed and

read it then, hey? It's growing late and my candle is most burned out.

The first chapter of Genesis is short, is it? Won't take one over three

minutes? Stick like a chestnut burr, don't you," and as if the matter

were decided, Hugh sprang into bed, shivering as if about to take a cold

plunge bath. How then was he disappointed to find the sheets as nice and

warm as Aunt Chloe's warming pan of red-hot coals could make them.

And so he fell away to sleep, dreaming that Golden Hair had come back,

and that he held her in his arms, just as he held the Bible he had

unconsciously taken from the pillow beneath his head.