"When ye can't eat lollypops, it's jest as well not to have them under your nose," he remarked, with seemingly no connection, but Jerome said nothing to that either.
He worked silently, with fierce energy, the rest of the morning.

He had not heard before of Lucina's ill health; she had not been to church the Sunday previous, but he had thought of nothing serious from that.

Now the dreadful possibility came to him--suppose she should die and leave his world entirely, of what avail would all his toil be then?
When he went home that noon he ate his dinner hastily, then, on his way back to the shop, left the road, crossed into a field, and sat down in the wide solitude, on a rock humping out of the dun roll of sere grass-land.

Always, in his stresses of spirit, Jerome sought instinctively some closet which he had made of the free fastnesses of nature.
The day was very dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather moderate.

Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds.