Had there been a knife in his hand, he might have cut Letizia’s throat, such an intolerable loathing of her beauty seized him. He rushed madly past the open door, and a moment or two afterwards he stood in the garret, surveying with hate the sleeping forms of the apprentices. A sunbeam glinting through the broken lattice of the dormer lit up the four flushed faces, spangled the hair of the youngest and fairest, and for Caleb pointed at the spectacle of brazen sloth. “Get up, you charity brats,” he shouted, pulling off the dirty coverlet. “Get up and work, or I’ll report you to the overseers for incorrigibles.” The children sat up in bed dazed by this sudden awakening. “Don’t loll there, rubbing your eyes and staring at me,” Caleb snarled. “If you aren’t downstairs and hard at work on those composition stars in five minutes, I’ll see what a good flogging will do for you.” From the boys’ garret Caleb went across to visit the girls’. “Get down to your scissors and paste, you lazy hussies,” he bellowed in the doorway. The little girls, the eldest of whom was hardly twelve, sat up in a huddle of terror. The shift of the youngest, who might be ten, was torn so that her bare shoulder protruded to affront Caleb’s gaze. He strode into the room and struck the offending few inches of skin and bone. “Will nothing teach you modesty?” he gibbered. “Aren’t you afraid of burning in Hell for your wickedness? Shame on you, I say. Have you no needle and thread, Amelia Diggle? You ought to be whipped, and I hope Madame will whip you well. Now stop that blubbering and dress yourself, and in five minutes let me find you all hard at work.” Caleb retired to his own bedroom, where after a miserly use of soap and water he changed out of his rusty black evening clothes into the drab of daily life. He was then able to bend down and say his prayers, partly because the drab breeches were not as tight as the black pantaloons and partly because they did not show the dust so easily. In contemplating Caleb while he is kneeling to ask his savage deity to give him Letizia and to bless his discovery of chlorate of potash as a colour intensifier and to fructify his savings and to visit His wrath upon all unbelievers, one may feel that perhaps it was being unduly sentimental last night, a trifle wrought upon by music and starshine and coloured lamps, to wish that this tale might remain in the year of grace 1829.