United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At length they turned into the street now called Sault au Matelot, into which opens the lane once bearing that name, and strolled idly along in the cool shadow, silence, and solitude of the street. She was strangely released from the constraint which Mr. Arbuton usually put upon her.
"What is that ridiculous little wretch staring at you for, Kitty?" asked Fanny. "I don't know," answered Kitty, absently. The man was now smiling and gesturing violently. Kitty remembered having seen him before, and then recognized the cooper who had released Mr. Arbuton from the dog in the Sault au Matelot, and to whom he had given his lacerated overcoat.
Arbuton, here, I've no doubt has been introduced to the crowned heads of the Old World, and longs to pay his respects to the sovereign of Lorette. Besides, I always call upon the reigning prince when I come to Lorette. The coldness of the heir-apparent shall not repel me." The colonel led the way up the principal lane of the village.
The girls will be there with him, Virginia all red and heated with having got supper for you, and Rachel with the family mending in her hand, and they'll both come running down the walk to welcome you. How will you like it?" Mr. Arbuton suspected the gross caricature of this picture, and smiled securely at it. "I shall like it well enough," he said, "if you run down with them. Where shall you be?"
March as she did with her cousin at home: she liked to be frank and gay in her parley, to jest and to laugh and to make harmless fun, and to sentimentalize in a half-earnest way; she liked to be with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she could take her natural tone with him.
Arbuton was not the man to seem to boast of his share of the adventure by telling what had happened, even if he had cared at that moment to do so. Her very ignorance of what he had dared for her only confirmed his new sense of possession; and, if he could, he would not have marred the pleasure he felt by making her grateful yet, sweet as that might be in its time.
Then they dispersed about the grounds to trace out the borders of the garden, and Mr. Arbuton won the common praise by discovering the foundations of the stable of the château. Then there was no more to do but to prepare for the picnic. They chose a grassy plot in the shadow of a half-dismantled bark-lodge, a relic of the Indians, who resort to the place every summer.
Friends," he added to his own party, "we have the Falls of Lorette and the better part of the afternoon still before us; how shall we employ them?" Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and Mr. Arbuton did not know, as they sauntered down past the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds its industry from the beauty of the fall.
"No, I'm not," she retorted, gasping and panting. "I never respected Mr. Arbuton so much, and you say yourself I haven't shown myself so careful of him before. But I never was so glad to see Dick in my life, and to have some excuse for laughing. I didn't dare to speak to Mr. Arbuton about it, for he couldn't, if he had tried, have let me laugh it out and be done with it.
You can't help feeling, you know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and common. Have you ever seen the Rhine?" "O, no! This is almost the first I've seen of anything. Perhaps," she added, demurely, yet with a tremor at finding herself about to make light of Mr. Arbuton, "if I had had too much of tradition on the Rhine I should want more of it on the Saguenay."
Word Of The Day