Singleheart and Doubleface Author:Charles Reade Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. What wonderful restoratives are a good long sleep and the dawn of day ! They co-operate so, invigorating the body and fortifying the mind. They c... more »lear away the pain and the forebodings night engenders, and brighten not only the face of nature, but our individual prospects. The glorious dawn falling upon our refreshed eyes and invigorated bodies is like a trumpet sounding ' Nil desperandum !' Mrs. Mansell was one of the many whom sleep and dawn re- inspired and reconciled to her lot that morning. She had slept in a pure atmosphere—untarnished by a drunkard's breath. She awoke with her nerves composed and her heart strengthened. Her life was to be a battle—that was plain. But she had forces and an ally. Her forceswere rare health, strength, prudence, and sobriety. Her ally was Deborah. She began the battle this morning brightly and hopefully. She was the first up, and having dressed herself neatly, as she always did, she put on a large apron and bib, coarse but clean, and descended to the parlour. She called up the spiral staircase—' James!' No answer. She went into the shop, and called down the kitchen stairs. No reply from her sister. ' Lazy-bones,' said she. She struck a light in the shop, and her eye fell upon a large handbell. She took it up and rang it down the kitchen stairs. Instantly there was a sort of yawn of distress. Then she bustled into the parlour, and rang it up the spiral staircase. Then she set it down, and took her candle into the shop, and sorted, and dusted, and counted the goods, and cleaned the counter. Fresently in sauntered Deborah from the kitchen, with her hair in curl-papers, and a chasm in the upper part of her gown, so thatshe seemed half-dislocated; and she adhered to the wall for support, and sprawled out one long arm and a...« less