United States or Qatar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"How do you do, Aunt Egeria?" he cried, and he caught her small woman's hand in a hard brown one and smiled on the little lady. Bertha Afflint had flung her magazine to the winds and caught his available left hand. "Oh, Lewie, you wretch! how glad we are to see you again." Meantime the dogs performed a solemn minuet around her ladyship's knees.
There was his bill to be settled, there was a chair broken, Alan had sat among his dinner things, James More had fled. "Here," I cried, "pay yourself," and flung him down some Lewie d'ors; for I thought it was no time to be accounting. He sprang upon that money, and we passed him by, and ran forth into the open.
On one occasion she found herself in a cottage on the Gledsmuir road, her hands filled with election literature. A hale old man was sitting at his meal, who greeted her cordially, and made her sit down while she stumbled through the usual questions and exhortations. "Are ye no' bidin' at Glenavelin?" he asked. "And have I no seen ye walking on the hill wi' Maister Lewie?"
"Then the hearts of the people have a funny way of revealing themselves," Lady Clanroyden laughed. "I'm not at all sorry that Lewie was beaten. He is the best man in the world, but one wants to shake him up. His motto is 'Thole, and he gets too few opportunities of 'tholing." "You all call him 'Lewie," commented the lady. "How popular he must be!" Mabel Clanroyden laughed.
And what can I do? I'm a Stewart, ye see, and must fend for my clan and family. Then no later by than yesterday there was one of our Stewart lads carried to the Castle. What for? I ken fine: Act of 1736: recruiting for King Lewie. And you'll see, he'll whistle me in to be his lawyer, and there'll be another black mark on my chara'ter!
In the event of success, on the other hand, your fortune is something more than made." "Would you go?" came the question. "No," said Wratislaw, "I shouldn't." "But if you were in my place?" "I should hope that I would, but then I might not have the courage. I am giving you the brave man's choice, Lewie. You will be going out to uncertainty and difficulty and extreme danger.
"You're an infernal idiot, Lewie, and an infernal child. Thank heaven! your friends know you better than you know yourself." The next morning it was a different man who came down to breakfast. He had lost his haggard air, and seemed to have forgotten the night's episode. "Was I very rude to everybody last night?" he asked. "I have a vague recollection of playing the fool."
"I do," said the young man in a tone of decent melancholy. "She once cuffed my ears the month I stayed with you for falling in the burn. Does she beat you, Doctor?" "Indeed, no," said the little old gentleman; "not as yet. But physically she is my superior and I live in terror." Then abruptly, "For heaven's sake, Lewie, mind the mare."
He quarrelled with most of his neighbours, and got into a trick of magnifying little troubles till he shrank from the slightest discomfort." "And my mother?" "Ah, your mother was different a cheery, brave woman. While she lived she kept him in some measure of self-confidence, but you know she died at your birth, Lewie, and after that he grew morose and retiring.
Hence, when he found him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own, he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness. "You know I've always backed Lewie to romp home some day," went on the young man. "He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn't jib and bolt altogether." "I don't see why you should talk of your friends as if they were racehorses or prize dogs."
Word Of The Day