Could she venture to reveal her face to them without a blush ? Yes . Tackleton observed her closely , and she did all this . Tilly was hushing the baby , and she crossed and recrossed Tackleton a dozen times , repeating drowsily : `` Did the knowledge that it was to be its wives , then , wring its hearts almost to breaking ; and did its fathers deceive it from its cradles but to break its hearts at last ! '' `` Now , Tilly , give me the Baby ! Good night , Mr. Tackleton . Where 's John , for goodness ' sake ? '' `` He 's going to walk beside the horse 's head , '' said Tackleton ; who helped her to her seat . `` My dear John ! Walk ? To-night ? '' The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the affirmative ; and , the false stranger and the little nurse being in their places , the old horse moved off . Boxer , the unconscious Boxer , running on before , running back , running round and round the cart , and barking as triumphantly and merrily as ever . When Tackleton had gone off likewise , escorting May and her mother home , poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter ; anxious and remorseful at the core ; and still saying , in his wistful contemplation of her , `` Have I deceived her from her cradle , but to break her heart at last ? '' The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby had all stopped and run down long ago . In the faint light and silence , the imperturbably calm dolls , the agitated rocking-horses with distended eyes and nostrils , the old gentlemen at the street-doors , standing half doubled up upon their failing knees and ankles , the wry-faced nut-crackers , the very Beasts upon their way into the Ark , in twos , like a Boarding-School out walking , might have been imagined to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder at Dot being false , or Tackleton beloved , under any combination of circumstances . CHIRP THE THIRD The Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten when the Carrier sat down by his fireside . So troubled and grief-worn that he seemed to scare the Cuckoo , who , having cut his ten melodious announcements as short as possible , plunged back into the Moorish Palace again , and clapped his little door behind him , as if the unwonted spectacle were too much for his feelings . If the little Hay-maker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes , and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier 's heart , he never could have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done . It was a heart so full of love for her ; so bound up and held together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance , spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endearment ; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely ; a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth , so strong in right , so weak in wrong , -- that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first , and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol .
But , slowly , slowly , XXXXX the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth , now cold and dark , other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him , as an angry wind comes rising in the night .
If as at behind in into on out to under