touch them lest they should fawn upon her splendid garments.
She kissed me gently, I was all flour making the Christmas cake, and it would not have done to give me a hug; and, then, she looked round for Heathcliff. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw watched anxiously their meeting, thinking it would enable them to judge, in some measure, what grounds they had for hoping to succeed in separating the two friends.
Heathcliff was hard to discover, at first—If he were careless, and uncared for, before Catherine's absence, he had been ten times more so, since.
Nobody, but I even did him the kindness to call him a dirty boy, and bid him wash himself, once a week; and children of his age, seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three month's service, in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair; the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded.
