United States or New Caledonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The lady caught me to her bosom, and kissing me amidst her tears, said, "Ralph, I will be your mother, though you must only look upon me as your godmamma." "Oh, I'm so glad of that! and what shall I call you?" "Mamma, my dear child." "Well, mamma, won't you take me home? I don't mean now, but at the holidays, when all the others go to their mammas? I'll be so good. Won't you, mamma?"

"We are lucky fellows, you and I," he said at last, "to have a monk to pray for us." Ralph glanced at him, for he was perfectly grave, and a rather intent and awed look was in his eyes. "I think a deal of that," he went on, "though I cannot talk to a churchman as I should. I had a terrible time with my Lord of Canterbury last year, at Otford.

It was not in the least what he had meant to do with the fugitive flash of consciousness he called self; but all that he had purposed for that transitory being sank into insignificance under the pressure of Undine's claims. Ralph Marvell's notion of women had been formed on the experiences common to good-looking young men of his kind.

Now the captain began to think as fiercely and rapidly as a man's mind could be made to work. Some one had been there. Some one had taken away gold from that mound how much or how little, it did not matter. Some one besides himself had had access to the treasure! His suspicions fell upon Ralph, chiefly because his most earnest desire at that moment was that Ralph might be the offender.

As night approached, the wild waste of waters looked terribly stern and forbidding. Occasionally a distant breaking of some white capped wave would send his heart into his mouth, only to sink again despairingly. Just at sunset the great luminary peered gloriously forth. Torturing as was its power at midday, now it seemed to Ralph as if a friend were bidding him farewell.

In spite of himself, there was a wavering note of uncertainty in it. "Oh, we'll get them yet!" Ralph said. "How about it, old fellow?" Ralph had never lost his old habit of turning to Frank in psychological distress. But Frank again kept silence. "Betchu we find them at home to-night," Honey said as they started down the trail an hour ahead of time. "Who'll take me. Come!"

But Ralph stooped down to her, and lifted her up, and embraced her and kissed her on the cheeks and the mouth, and led her to the settle and sat down beside her and put his arm about her; and Clement looked on smiling, and sat him down over against them. Then spake Katherine: "O my lord! how great and masterful hast thou grown; never did I hope to see thee come back so mighty a man."

Now Ralph is somewhat abashed by her eagerness, and lets his eyes fall before hers; and he cannot but note that despite the brambles and briars of the wood that she had run through, there were no scratches on her bare legs, and that her arm was unbruised where the sleeve had been rent off.

'No good can come of your knowing, replied Ralph. 'She has been virtuously and well brought up; to be sure she is handsome, poor, unprotected! Poor girl, poor girl.

'When my brother was such as he, said Ralph, 'the first comparisons were drawn between us always in my disfavour. HE was open, liberal, gallant, gay; I a crafty hunks of cold and stagnant blood, with no passion but love of saving, and no spirit beyond a thirst for gain. I recollected it well when I first saw this whipster; but I remember it better now.