Six months had passed.
It was now mid-winter.
And still the girl lived. Her vitality appeared inexhaustible.
She got up earlier and earlier. She now rose yesterday afternoon.
At intervals she seemed almost sane, and spoke in a most pathetic manner
of her grave and the probability of the sun shining on it early in the
morning, and her mother walking on it later in the day. At other times
her malady would seize her, and she would snatch the brick off the
string and throw it fiercely at Tennyson. Once, in an uncontrollable fit
of madness, she gave her sister Effie a half-share in her garden tools
and an interest in a box of mignonette.
The poet stayed doggedly on. In the chill of the morning twilight he
broke the ice in his water-basin and cursed the girl. But he felt that
he had broken the ice and he stayed.
On the whole, life at the cottage, though rugged, was not cheerless. In
the long winter evenings they would gather around a smoking fire of
peat, while Tennyson read aloud the Idylls of the King to the rude old
cottager. Not to show his rudeness, the old man kept awake by sitting on
a tin-tack. This also kept his mind on the right tack. The two found
that they had much in common, especially the old cottager. They called
each other "Alfred" and "Hezekiah" now.