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We sat in the short sweet grass of the headland, just as we had sat many a time when we were boy and girl, when life was all as bright as the inside of an ormer shell and we were friends with all the world. The sun was dropping behind Herm into a dark bank of clouds which lay all along the western sky. Behind the clouds the heavens seemed ablaze with a mighty conflagration.
The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of an ormer.
And then I noticed that the little ormer shell curls about this little lady's face were not all gray, but mixed gray and brown, and that this little face was, if anything, still more frigidly ungracious than the last, a regular little martinet of a face, and I knew that it must be another of the Miss Maugers. "Yes, ma'm'zelle, with your permission."
The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of an ormer.
The sun was up but not yet stripped for the long day's race to the west. The eastern skies still gleamed through a faery haze with the soft iridescence of a young ormer shell, the tender pinks and greens and golds of the new day's birth-chamber mellowing upwards into the glorious blue of a day of days.
It hurt him considerably. He tied his handkerchief around it and resumed his walk. Seeing a great gap in the hedge he looked through it and saw that the men were plunging the porker in a great tub full of steaming water. Then followed a scraping with ormer shells, and, in a few minutes, the black pig was divested of his hairy coat.
The dressmaker to whom I had alluded had been my mother's maid in f ormer years, and had been established in business with money lent by my late step-father, Mr. Germaine. I used both their names without scruple; and I wrote my recommendation in terms which the best of living women and the ablest of existing dressmakers could never have hoped to merit. Will anybody find excuses for me?
She looked at me half mistrustfully, like a bird which doubts one's intentions towards its bit of plunder, and then, just like the bird, seemed to gauge my innocence of evil, and bent and whispered into her sister's gray and brown ormer shells. "My sister informs me that Mademoiselle Le Marchant has been apprised of your visit and has expressed a desire to see you, and so "
I scrambled gaily up to the path that leads into the Island, and everything was shining bright, like the inside of an ormer shell the sea as blue as the sky, except close under the headlands, where it was clear, soft green; the waves farther out flashed in the sunlight and showed their white teeth wherever they met the rocks; and the rocks were yellow and brown and black, and all fringed with tawny seaweed, and here beside me the golden-rod flamed yellow and orange, and the dark green bracken swung lazily in the breeze.
Her face reminded me somewhat of Aunt Jeanne Falla's, but lacked the kindly twinkle of the eyes which redeemed Aunt Jeanne's shrewdest and sharpest speeches. She had little fiat rows of grey curls, tight to her head, on each side of her face, for all the world like little ormer shells sticking to a stone. "Monsieur Le Marchant?" she asked. "No, madame ma'm'zelle. I am Phil Carré."
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