United States or Rwanda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I suppose," he had conceded grudgingly, "we must have a brat to carry swords and cloaks for us, or we'll be taken for some o' your cheap-jack hucksters parading latest fashions," and he bade our host of the Star and Garter have some lad searched out for us by the time we should be coming home from Sir John Kirke's that night.
When eighteen he was graduated from the University of Pisa; and at that early age his family and friends were comparing him, not without reason, to a Genius who had come out of Tuscany some years before, Leonardo da Vinci. Parents either exaggerate the talents of their children or else belittle them. The woman who bore George Gordon called him "that lame brat"; but we call him "The Poet Byron."
The other two nodded in solemn sympathy. After a moment, Jake took out his pipe and filled it. Holding the lighted match above the bowl, he glanced at Skinner. "Where air Tess?" he asked. "She air up to Young's. He air learnin' her book stuff, an' his sister air helpin' the brat sing. It air astonishin' how the brat takes to it. Jest like a duck to water."
Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with "accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur groaned. "Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"
When the carpenter concluded his recital, Jonathan was for a moment lost in reflection. "Devilish strange!" thought he, chuckling to himself; "queer business! Capital trick of the cull in the cloak to make another person's brat stand the brunt for his own capital! ha! ha! Won't do, though. He must be a sly fox to get out of the Mint without my knowledge.
In front of her stood the Brat, deeply interested in the operation, his curly head bent, his childish little hands on his hips. He was talking and laughing gaily; but at the sound of footsteps in the passage he glanced up, and, seeing me, stared in haughty surprise, which tipped the scales towards anger.
Whether I should have yielded to or resisted the temptation is another matter. Honestly speaking, I think I should have resisted. You see, I should still have been engaged to Eleanor Faversham. . . . But now this somewhat unholy influence is gone from her. She has lifted me in her strong arms as a mother would lift a brat of ten. She has patiently suffered my whimsies as if I had been a sick girl.
Raising her heavy lids, eyes rested on a man's face, showing dimly in the dusk of the starlight. He said in English, "Canute's page, by the Saints!" A chorus of voices answered him: "The fiend's brat that pierced your shoulder?" "Choke him!" "Better he die now than after he has waxed large on English blood." "Finish him!"
"Faix thin, ma'am, thim wor his very words 'Tell Mr. Thady, av he don't come down to the cottage to his dinner this day, divil a bit will I ate till he does." "Well, to hear the brat!" continued Biddy, shocked at the indecorous language which was put into her priest's mouth. "And who's to be at Father John's else?" said Thady.
Word Of The Day