Sole on the barren ſands the ſuff'ring chief / Roar'd out for anguiſh, and indulg'd his grief.

The cat scratched the little girl.

a withheld phone number

If the fire, with its giant black kettle swung over the flames, is our never-extinguished shrine, then the stove is an altar. It is habitually tended by my step-aunt Calliope (usually known as Calli), a dark, stocky, dense-looking woman with beetling black brows and a tied-back sheaf of thick hair, still raven-black without a trace of silver after her forty-four years.