United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"The rainbow just for a moment, over the marsh?" "No, I didn't. Do you expect me to hunt for rainbows while I may look into your face?" The faint colour came to her cheeks, then receded. "Better go on," she suggested, "if we're to get where we're going before dark." The oars murmured in the water, then rain dripped from the shining blades.
To add to the difficulties, not only did the sea encroach, turning a fertile land into a salt marsh, but the winter rains, unusually heavy that tragic first winter, and lacking their usual egress to the sea, spread the flood. There were many places well back of the lines where fields were flooded, and where roads, sadly needed, lost themselves in unfordable wallows of mud and water.
None was for longer than two years, but they all spoke well of the young man before her. "Then you've never been on the Marsh before you came to Botolph's Bridge?" "No, missus." "Sheep on the Marsh is very different from sheep inland." "I know, missus." "But you think you're up to the job." "Yes, missus." Joanna stared at him critically.
But it was in the dead ebb of the tide and the waning daylight that the feathered tenants of the Marsh seemed to voice dismal prophecies of the ruin of their old master and mistress, and to give themselves up to gloomiest lamentation and querulous foreboding.
"Isn't this the horse and wagon that was lost in the blizzard?" asked Sunny Boy, scrambling up to a seat beside Bob. Indeed all the boys tried to get near Bob, and when he turned the horse's head toward the farmhouse, there were boys on every side of him. "Same horse, same wagon," said Bob. "Only difference is the weather. Feel how warm that sun is?" "Where we going?" asked Carleton Marsh.
His name is Mr. Marsh." "Well, what's he like?" asked Aunt Hetty, folding together the old wadded petticoat she had been shaking. "Oh, he's all right too," said Elly. She wasn't going to say anything about that funny softness of his hands, she didn't like, because that would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something Aunt Hetty would just laugh at, and call one of her notions.
The Dublin people were gregarious and garrulous, and he was solitary and reflective. Marsh and Galway had taken him to houses where people met and talked without stopping, and much conversation with miscellaneous, casually-encountered people bored Henry.
The little train was nearly empty, and Joanna had a carriage to herself. She settled herself comfortably in a corner it was good to be coming home, even as things were. The day was very sunny and still. The blue sky was slightly misted a yellow haze which smelt of chaff and corn smudged together the sky and the marsh and the distant sea.
"Oh, that's by water," said the driver; "but this road's got to go around the end of the bay, and after that 'way round the top of the big marsh, and that makes it a good seventeen miles to Sanpritchit. Half past nine! Why, the boss told me, if I didn't get there before twelve, I must stop somewhere and water the mare and give her some oats. I've got a bag of them back there." I sat dumb.
It is said that the Turkish shrapnel was of such poor quality that the British troops passed unscathed through it, only being wounded when they were hit by cases and fuses. All told, the British suffered ninety casualties in this attack on the enemy round the Horseshoe Marsh.
Word Of The Day