United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Then I noticed that a big, blue-checked cloth was spread on the parapet before me, over the parapet of heaven. I wondered why it hung there. Turning round, on the other side of the terrace, under a caper-bush that hung like a blood-stain from the grey wall above her, stood a little grey woman whose fingers were busy. Like the grey church, she made me feel as if I were not in existence.

I love her white soul, Emily; she allus brings heaven right down to airth, and even when she don't talk I feel so kind of blessed when I sit near her. Few such folks are let to live, and somehow I'm almost convinced she can't stay long," and the corner of her blue-checked apron would touch her humid eyes, as she turned again to her work.

The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red calico wrapper a scrap of it had made the doll's frock and a blue-checked apron with holes in it.

She wore a shapeless pink cotton dress which reached almost to her ankles, and over that a blue-checked apron which nearly trailed on the floor. Her sleeves were rolled elbow-high and one little thin hand clutched a dish-cloth as a badge of office. Wade stared dubiously at Zephania and Zephania smiled brightly back. "Look here, my child," said Wade, "how old are you, anyway?"

They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood.

She flew up the staircase. In a few minutes she was back again. She had exchanged her smart rose-sprigged chintz for a pathetic little blue-checked frock of her school-days; the fateful hat had given way to a brown straw "flat," bent like a frame around her charming face.

To be sure our delight was somewhat damped the next day by the coldness with which my good old uncle, Jeremiah Standfast, who happened along at precisely this crisis, listened to our visions. "You'll find it pleasant, children, in the summer time," said the hard-fisted old man, twirling his blue-checked pocket handkerchief; "but I'm sorry you've gone in debt for the land."

'Can't you call him? asked Mr. Sponge, still fumbling in his pocket. 'Couldn't, if it was ever so, replied the dame, smoothing her dirty blue-checked apron with her still dirtier hand. 'Why not? asked Mr. Sponge. 'Why not? repeated the woman; 'why, 'cause Mr. Bottleends won't be disturbed by no one. He said when he went to bed that he hadn't to be called till to-morrow.

Sister Tobias went on: "The Siege Gazette had come out that day, with the news of" she dropped her voice to a whisper "of her being likely to be married before long to him that's gone. May Our Lord give him rest!" Sister Tobias's well-accustomed fingers pattered over the bib of her blue-checked apron, making the Sign.

They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood.