painting in oil

foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The
stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but
sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in
the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist penetrated to their
shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.
As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take
notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of
isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much. I leant
against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about
me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the
unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to
the employment of watching and thinking. My reflections were too
undefined and fragmentary to merit record: I hardly yet knew where I
was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable
distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future I could
form no conjecture. I looked round the convent-like garden, and then