United States or Nauru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This was in the evening; by morning it was gone, having probably taken flight at sunrise. Miss Fosbrook listened with all the pleasure the boys could desire.
"Nonsense, David," said Miss Fosbrook; "Bessie is quite to be trusted; and it is wrong to make unfounded accusations." "Never mind, Betty," added Sam kindly; "if Davie wasn't a little donkey, he wouldn't say such things." "Where is Henry?" asked the governess. "Why did he not come himself? Call him; I want to know if he observed this door being open." "He is gone down to Mr. Carey's," said John.
The whole party were delighted to gather flowers for Miss Fosbrook the wetter or the steeper places they grew in the better; but the boys thought it girlish to know the names; and Susan, though liking gardening, did not in the least care for the inside of a flower.
However, nothing remarkable happened; everyone was bright and happy; but still the influence of their past alarm subdued them enough to make them quiet and well-behaved, both on Saturday and Sunday; and Miss Fosbrook had never had so little trouble with them.
Miss Fosbrook was rather shocked at the tearing out the nest, and asked if the old bird would not have another brood there; but it was explained that a thrush would never return to a forsaken nest; and when Sam came down with it in his hand, she was delighted with the wonderful cup that formed the lining, so smooth and firm a bason formed of dried mud set within the grassy wall.
Yet here was a girl whose thoughts might be expected to run on youths and ribands talking of it in a little village four miles from Leamington as though there were no topic more universal. Sir Charles Fosbrook answered her gravely. "I thought never to speak of Tangier and the mole again. I spent many years upon the devising and construction of that great breakwater.
"We have tempers, certainly," said Miss Fosbrook; "and unless we have conquered them as children, there will be signs of them afterwards; but very few people, and certainly no children, can tell when grave looks, or words sharper than usual, come from illness or anxiety or sorrow; and it is the only way to save great grief and self-reproach to give one's own faults the blame, and try to be as unobtrusive and obliging as possible."
"And they call me Bell, and sometimes Jelly-bag and Currant-jelly," said Miss Fosbrook, laughing and sighing, for she would have liked to have heard those funny names again. "Then it is no good to you!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "I don't know that we talk of good in such a matter. I like my name because of the reason it was given to me." "Oh, why?" eagerly asked the little girl.
"Mamma had been out in the carriage several times; and they were all coming home on Saturday week" that was the best news of all "and then we have a secret too for Miss Fosbrook." David said he was tired of secrets, and would not guess. Annie guessed a great deal; but Miss Fosbrook thought more about the word she would not try to read.
"You are a neighbour of my niece in Devonshire, I believe?" she asked. He admitted the fact monosyllabically. He was supremely uncomfortable, and it seemed to him that Jane, who was conducting an apparently entertaining conversation with Colonel Fosbrook, might have done something to rescue him. "My niece has very broad ideas," Lady Somerham went on.
Word Of The Day