MS-WU-MSS008-2-47

[0255] hook at one end. [0256] Thanks to it I can control the fu^[⁁]arthest
recesses of my abode. [0257] How great is my debt to sticks!^![^!] [0258] So great
that I almost forget the blows they have transferred to me. [0259] She
is an old woman. [0260] I don't know why she is good to me. [0261] Yes, let us
call it goodness, without quibbling. [0262] For her it is certainly
goodness. [0263] I believe her to be even older than I. [0264] But rather less
well preserved, in spite of her mobility.

[0265] Perhaps she goes with
the room, in a manner of speaking. [0266] In that case she does not call
for separate treatment ^study[^study]. [0267] But it is conceivable that she does what
she does out of sheer charity, or moved with regard to me by a
less gebⁿeral feeling of compassion or affection. [0268] Nothing is
impossible, I cannot keep on denying it much longer. [0269] But it is
more convenient to suppose that when I came in for the room I
came in for her too.

[0270] All I see of her now is the gaunt hand and
part of the sleeve. [0271] Not even that, not even that. [0272] Perhaps she
is dead, having predeceased me, perhaps now it is another's hand
that garnishes ^lays[^lays] and clears my little table. [0273] I don't know how long
I have been here, I must have said so. [0274] All I know is that I was
very old already before I found myself here. [0275] I call myself an
octogenarian, but I cannot prove it. [0276] Perhaps I am only a
quinquagenarian, or a quadragenarian.

[0277] It is ages since I counted
them, my years I mean. [0278] I know the year of my birth, I have not
forgotten that, but I do not know what year I have got to now.
[0279] But I think I have been bere for here for some very considerable
time. [0280] For there is nothing the various seasons can do to me,
within the shelter of these walls, that I do not know. [0281] That is
not to be learnt in one year or two. [0282] In a flicker of my lids