United States or Iraq ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She could see them sitting round the dining-room: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, Mrs. Belk with her busy eyes, and Miss Kendal and Miss Louisa, Mrs. Oldshaw and Dorsy; and Mrs. Horn, the grocer's wife, very stiff in a corner by herself, sewing unbleached calico and hot red flannel, hot sunlight soaking into them. The library was dim, and leathery and tobaccoey and cool.
What frightened Dorsy was hearing her say suddenly, "Mary's gone." She said it to herself when she didn't know Dorsy was in the room. Then she had left off asking and wondering. For five days she hadn't said anything about you. Not anything at all. When she heard your name she stared at them with a queer, scared look.
And people staring at him. He would be well if he could get away. Then he would be well if he could marry Dorsy. So the first year passed. And the second. And the third year. She was five and twenty. She thought: "I shall die before I'm fifty. I've lived half my life and done nothing." Old Dr. Kendal was dead. He had had nothing more to live for. He had beaten Mr. Peacock of Sarrack.
I'm sure you wouldn't do anything you'd be sorry to think of with your poor mother in the state she's in." I don't care. I don't care what they think. There would still be Catty and Dorsy and Louisa Wright and Miss Kendal and Dr. Charles with their kind eyes that loved you. And Richard living his eternal life in your heart. And Mamma would never know.
He liked her small face, trying to look austere with shy hare's eyes; her vague mouth, pointed at the corners in a sort of sharp tenderness; her smooth, otter-brown hair brushed back and twisted in a tight coil at the nape of her neck. Dorsy was sweet and gentle and unselfish. He might have cared for Dorsy if it hadn't been for Mamma.
Yesterday she had said to Dorsy Heron, "What I can't stand is seeing the same faces every day." But the hill world had never the same face for five minutes. Its very form changed as the roads turned. The swing of your stride put in play a vast, mysterious scene-shifting that disturbed the sky. Moving through it you stood still in the heart of an immense being that moved.
Heron's house they knew what she was going for. "Poor Dorsy!" they said. "Poor Dorsy!" They had something to talk to each other about now. Winter and spring passed. The thorn-trees flowered on Greffington Edge: dim white groves, magically still under the grey, glassy air. May passed and June. The sleek waves of the hay-fields shone with the brushing of the wind, ready for mowing.
When you told her to go back and marry him at once she would only laugh and say, "There's your husband, and there's your children. You're my child, Miss Mary. Master Roddy was Jenny's child and you was always mine." You were only ten years younger than Catty, but like Richard she couldn't see that you were old. You would never know whether Catty knew about Richard; or whether Dorsy knew.
Shy hare's face trying to look austere. Norman Waugh, sulky and superior, in a corner. As Roddy came in everybody but Norman Waugh turned round and stared at him with sudden, happy smiles. He was so beautiful that it made people happy to look at him. His very name, Rodney Olivier, sounded more beautiful than other people's names. Dorsy Heron's shy hare's eyes tried to look away and couldn't.
I wonder how Mamma and Dorsy are getting on.... I'm not going to think about Mamma. It isn't fair to Richard. I shan't think about anybody but Richard for this fortnight. One evening of it's gone already. It might have lasted quite another hour if he hadn't got up and gone away so suddenly. What a fool I was to let him think I was tired. There will be thirteen evenings more. Thirteen.
Word Of The Day