United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The representations of Alice's condition, as given by her maid, although hideously unlike the beautiful object they were meant to call up to the father's mind, were sufficiently expressive and comprehensible. "Go wake her, my girl, and let us have breakfast as soon as you can. Has Will Corrie been here this morning?" "What mean you? has he slept in this house all night?" "Yes eh! no," said Poopy.
Kitty's dark-blue skirt was all that was correct and proper; it reached just to her ankles, and her remarkably small and beautifully-shaped feet were encased in the neatest possible tan boots. But the blouse of light pink silk, all bedizened with bunches of ribbons and lappets of lace, was in Alice's eyes almost as painfully unsuitable as the trained skirt.
The laugh that followed this dreadful threat was loud and general, the victims laughing loudest of all, and the soldier smiling about benignly, and slowly scratching his elbows. Even the two ladies smiled. Alice's face remained impassive. She looked twice into her mother's to see if there was no smile there.
"'She does not know anything but that her side is beating," he quoted meditatively. "I thought my generosity in confession might at least forestall sarcasm," she said severely. "It ought to do so," he admitted. There was a moment's pause. "Has youth itself changed with the times, I wonder?" he speculated. "Certainly you did not sympathize overmuch with defeat at Alice's age."
He was only sixteen, indeed, but he was strong and well grown, and much fitter for service than many of those who would be sent. If the young fellow stopped here he would always be a trouble, and a bone of contention between himself and his wife. Besides, for Alice's sake, it was clearly his duty to get the fellow out of the way. Girls, Mr.
Undoubtedly, had he satisfied himself that Alice's happiness demanded such a sacrifice of himself, he would have made it, and made it without a word of complaint. The blow would not have prostrated him, but the bruise would have remained on his heart, indelible, not to be healed but by death. He would have submitted, and no man would have seen that he had been injured.
Once George came out of the room for a few minutes, with a face flaked with white, and his surgeon's gown crumpled, wet with water and stained here and there a terrible red. He did not speak to either woman, and in answer to Alice's breath of interrogation merely shook his head. At four o'clock Warren himself came to the door. Rachael sprang to her feet, was close to him in a second.
And the hint had such a good effect, that after a while, it was reported all over the plantation that Bacchus "had give up drinkin, for good and all." It was in answer to Arthur's letter, expressing great anxiety to hear from home, in consequence of so long a time having passed without his receiving his usual letters, that Mr. Weston wrote him of Alice's illness.
Lady Midlothian's was the first opened, and then came a spot of anger on Alice's cheeks as she saw the signature, and caught a word or two as she allowed her eye to glance down the page.
"Why, he has followed me," said Alice; "he often does; but I came quick, and I thought I had left him at home to-day. This is too long an expedition for him. Kitty, I wish you had stayed at home." Kitty did not think so; he was arching his neck and purring in acknowledgment of Alice's soft touch. "Can't you send him back?" said Ellen.
Word Of The Day