His room was lined
with books, but they had not that friendly look books generally
have, but, bound in dingy brown calf, looked as grim and uninviting
as their contents, which were mostly sermons and cheerful
anticipations of the bottomless pit. It was against Marchurst's
principles to gratify his senses by having nice things around him,
and his whole house was furnished in the same dismal manner.
So far did he carry this idea of mortifying the flesh through the
eyes that he had tried to induce Kitty to wear sad-coloured dresses
and poke bonnets; but in this attempt he failed lamentably, as Kitty
flatly refused to make a guy of herself, and always wore dresses of
the lightest and gayest description.
Marchurst groaned over this display of vanity, but as he could do
nothing with the obdurate Kitty, he allowed her to have her own way,
and made a virtue of necessity by calling her his 'thorn in the
flesh'.
He was a tall thin man, of a bleached appearance, from staying so
much in the dark, and so loosely put together that when he bowed he
did not as much bend as tumble down from a height. In fact, he
looked so carelessly fixed up that when he sat down he made the
onlooker feel quite nervous lest he should subside into a ruin, and
scatter his legs, arms, and head promiscuously all over the place.
He had a sad, pale, eager-looking face, with dreamy eyes, which
always seemed to be looking into the spiritual world.
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