United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A black-and-tan collie gave a few perfunctory barks as I drew near, whereupon Alf, with sleeves rolled up, and hands freshly blooded to the wrists, appeared at the door, and drew back on seeing me. I brought my horses through the gate, and he met me outside the hut; his hands washed, and his shirt-sleeves buttoned.
For five minutes more they walked on, then came suddenly out from under a line of trees and stood at the edge of a low cliff, gazing down in astonishment at the gully below them. "What on earth " began Tom Reade, in amazement. "Let's scoot!" begged Alf tremulously. "There's going to be some killing right down there!" It certainly looked that way.
All eyes were turned to Anderson Crow, who stood aloof, pondering as he had never pondered before. In one hand he held Miss Banks's bloody handkerchief and in the other a common school text-book on physiology. His badges and stars fairly revelled in their own importance. "Don't pester him with questions," warned Isaac Porter, addressing Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, who had just arrived.
'E said I read beautiful. Said 'e never 'eard any one read like that, but 'e said 'e couldn't abide the stuff in the papers. 'P'raps he's lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin' him about Stocks, Alf? 'No; it was all about fightin' out there where the soldiers is gone a great long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words in it.
"Stop!" he begged. "You win! I can see what you are aiming at. Here is a bean." Burton waved it away. "Listen," he proceeded. "I have also a child a little son. His name is Alfred. He is called Alf, for short. His mother greases his hair and he has a curl which comes over his forehead. I have never known him when his hands were not both sticky and dirty his hands and his lips.
Don't eat so much, Butterface, else bu'stin' will surely be your doom." "Your picture is perhaps a little overdrawn, Ben," rejoined Alf with a smile.
I fancy our love of paradox makes us prone to associate noble-mindedness with cantankerousness at all events, nobody ever called me noble-minded. But such is life." "Then this new situation is a permanent thing for him?" suggested the boundary man. "For Alf? No; I'm sorry to say, it's not." "Why?" "Because Stewart's about sixty, and Alf's somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirty-seven.
Alf captured turtles that, deep in the mud, had learned the advent of spring as readily as the creatures of the air. The fish were ascending the swollen streams. "Each rill," as Thoreau wrote, "is peopled with new life rushing up it." Abram and Alf were planning a momentous expedition to a tumbling dam on the Moodna, the favorite resort of the sluggish suckers.
He spoke, allowing for a clipped cadence that recalled to Copper vague memories of Umballa, in precisely the same offensive accent that the young squire of Wilmington had used fifteen years ago when he caught and kicked Alf Copper, a rabbit in each pocket, out of the ditches of Cuckmere.
An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion. Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep? Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir. Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of attending to the general public.
Word Of The Day