United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I felt like a traitor who was betraying his confidence, and I pictured to myself what he would think of me one day, when he came to know all, and that during his instruction on the subject of my eternal happiness I could have sat before him so false and bold. These scruples haunted me at home, too, and at last became a real martyrdom to me.
Often enough, when the first of the month came round, and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare me down; but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my fourpenny-piece, and repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg." How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you.
His head ached less. After his meal he stretched himself on the sofa again, but now he could not sleep; he lay without stirring, with his face in the pillow. He was haunted by day-dreams and such strange day-dreams; in one, that kept recurring, he fancied that he was in Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis.
Very different was the re-reflection it caused in Mistress Croale: she was satisfied with everything she saw there, except her complexion, and that she resolved should improve. She was almost painfully happy. Out there was the Widdiehill, dark and dismal and cold, through which she had come, sad and shivering and haunted with miserable thoughts, into warmth and splendour and luxury and bliss!
The sight had an exasperating effect upon Hadria. Its symbolism haunted her. The calm, sweet English landscape affected her at times with a sort of disgust. It was, perhaps, the same in kind as the far stronger sensation of disgust that she felt when she first saw Lady Engleton with her new-born child, full of pride and exultation.
He wouldn't sleep himself, nor let t'others sleep. He gat piper, an' put him top o' table, and kept him playing all t'night." One would think that friend Isaac had been haunted by the vision of the piper in his dreams; for, certes, the jovial buzzing of the pipes had not been able to drown the deep drone of his own nasal organ.
But whether it were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in its stead.
He did not care to dwell upon that, because Eldred had sued him to recover his stock, claiming that it was bought in under false pretenses. Neither did he care to enter into the stormy time which followed the sudden leap of "The Witch" from a haunted hole in the ground to a cave of diamonds. He hurried on to the end while she listened in absorbed interest like a child to a wonder story.
The necessity of writing home haunted him, to his mother and sister, whose pride in him was so great, and who hoped so much for the honours which they thought him so sure to win, to his brothers who had seen his diligence, and who would be deeply sorry to know that it had been in vain; to them at least he would be forced to announce the humiliating intelligence of defeat.
I closed my eyes, abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried my best to fancy myself listening to the strain back there amid the scenes I had haunted about Haslemere and Godalming, but with poor success, I suspect. The nightingale's song, like the lark's, needs vista, needs all the accessories of time and place. The song is not all in the singing, any more than the wit is all in the saying.
Word Of The Day