United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She did not go into the Office any more, but busied herself in a defiant fashion upon little cares for his comfort when he awoke. He should see that she did not neglect her house-wifely duties at least while she remained there to perform them. The qualification was significant of her mood.
"Now," she said, Friday night, consulting a much-worn bit of paper, and drawing a long, house-wifely sigh, "now I'm all ready, except the salad, and laying the table, and the decorating. If I only had a screen to put before the range, so that we needn't have the table in here! it will fill up so." Sara looked up. "There is one in our cloak-room at the museum.
Poor Marie! she was too frightened to cry, though all her woman's soul was in arms at the destruction of good food, to say nothing of the wound to her house-wifely pride. She sat silent, eating nothing, only making believe, when her husband looked her way, to crumble a bit of bread.
Branning been living in her own poorly-furnished house, Mr. Kinloch would hardly have thought of going to seek her. But as mistress of his establishment she had an opportunity to display her house-wifely qualities, as well as to practise those nameless arts by which almost any clever woman knows how to render herself agreeable.
He ate his boiled mutton and drank his ordinaire like a man, and when the meal was over, and he and Robert had withdrawn into the study, he gave an emphatic word of praise to the coffee which Catherine's house-wifely care sent after them, and accepting a cigar, he sank into the arm-chair by the fire and spread a bony hand to the blaze, as if he had been at home in that particular corner for months.
We had not expected him, since, when asked and entreated, he only shook his head; but just when we were all sitting down to the table, Ursula at the foot, her cheeks flushed, and her lips dimpling with a house-wifely delight that everything was so nice and neat, she startled us by a little cry of pleasure. And there, in the doorway, stood my father!
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the dancing-school.
To aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of Christina's training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice, and caused her to be carefully taught to sing and play on the lute, and he likewise delighted in hearing her read aloud to him from the hereditary store of MSS. and from the dark volumes that began to proceed from the press.
So is the girl who torments her kitty, slaps her sister, and runs away when her mother tells her not to go out of the yard. But the house-wifely little girl who tends the baby, washes the cups, and goes to school early with a sunshiny face and kiss all round, she, now, is a neighbour worth having, and I'd put a good mark against her name if I knew it.
Meanwhile her stepfather in the outer room had set the breakfast in readiness; but finding that she dozed he would not call her; he waited on, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with house-wifely care, as if it were an honour to have her in his house.
Word Of The Day