t: but he yielded completely;
and there was no prevailing on him to take a step in the way of moving
upward, when he found he must, necessarily, sink beneath his former
level. Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration:
he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved
disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable
moroseness; and he took a grim pleasure, apparently, in exciting the
aversion rather than the esteem of his few acquaintance.

Catherine and he were constant companions still at his seasons of respite
from labour; but he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words,
and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if
conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of
affection on him. On the before-named occasion he came into the house to
announce his intention of doing nothing, while I was assisting Miss Cathy
to arrange her dress: she had not reckoned on his taking it into his head
to be idle; and imagining she would have the whole place to herself, she
managed, by some means, to inform Mr. Edgar of her brother's absence, and
was then preparing to receive him.

'Cathy, are you busy this afternoon?' asked Heathcliff. 'Are you going
anywhere?'

'No, it is raining,' she answered.

'Why have you that silk frock on, then?' he said. 'Nobody coming here, I
hope?'

'Not that I know of,' stammered Miss: 'but you should be in the field
now, Heathcliff. It is an hour past dinnertime: I thought you were
gone.'

'Hindley does not often free us from his accursed presence,' observed the
boy. 'I'll not work any more to-day: I'll stay with you.'

'Oh, but Joseph will tell,' she suggested; 'you'd better go!'

'Joseph is loading lime on the further side of Penistone Crags; it will
take him till dark, and he'll never know.'

So, saying, he lounged to the fire, and sat down. Catherine reflected an
instant, with knitted brows--she found it needful to smooth the way for
an intrusion. 'Isabella and Edgar Linton talked of calling this
afternoon,' she said, at the conclusion of a minute's silence. 'As it
rains, I hardly expect them; but they may come, and if they do, you run
the risk of being scolded for no good.'

'Order Ellen to say you are engaged, Cathy,' he persisted; 'don't turn me
out for those pitiful, silly friends of yours! I'm on the point,
sometimes, of complaining that they--but I'll not--'

'