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The picnic had been over long ago, but, shortly after the party started to return, one of the horses lost a shoe; the carriage in which Anna was had to proceed at a slow walk for the rest of the distance, and it would be very late before she could reach Waverley. No accident, however, could damp her spirits, or those of her companions. It was all turned into amusement and fun.
"What," said the old woodman, "what is all this about a shoe and a cloak?" And Betsinda explained that she had been left, when quite a little child, at the town with this cloak and this shoe. And the persons who had taken care of her had had been angry with her, for no fault, she hoped, of her own. And they had sent her away with her old clothes and here, in fact, she was.
Nursing one small foot, in a silk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely entertained. It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, the serenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from the prehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea.
He had not been slow to recognise, by the unpleasant scenes that again became daily occurrences in our married life, at what point the shoe pinched that I had good-naturedly put on again at his request. However, when one day I reminded him that in coming hack to Zurich I had other objects in view besides the longing for a quiet domestic life, he remained silent.
Then he turned to Hilton, and blurted out, "Aw, the rose o' the valley, the pride o' the wide wurruld! aw, the bloom o' the hills! I'd have kissed her dirty shoe. McQuire!" A burst of laughter rolled out on the clear air of the prairie, and the hills seemed to stir with the pleasure of life.
He arrives with his face daubed with grease and wine lees, sometimes swallowed up in a grotesque mask. A wretched, cracked earthen cup, or an old wooden shoe, hanging by a string to his belt, he uses to ask alms in the shape of wine. No one refuses him, and he pretends to drink, then pours the wine on the ground by way of libation.
"It certainly appears, sir," said Psmith sympathetically, "to be free from paint. There's a sort of reddish glow just there, if you look at it sideways," he added helpfully. "Did you place that shoe there, Smith?" "I must have done. Then, when I lost the key " "Are you satisfied now, Downing?" interrupted Mr. Outwood with asperity, "or is there any more furniture you wish to break?"
And the faithful and valiant Bill, relieved of one shoe and four big collections of snow, hobbled forward again until he came to the foot of a hill that seemed to stretch clear to the moon, and then for the first time acted as if he had given up entirely and succumbed to misfortune. "How far is Mountain City, now, son?" asked Jimmy, not without some betrayal of anxiety.
She put her little foot slightly forward, and as he tied the string of her shoe she saw how slender was his hand, firm yet tapering down to the elegant finger-tips; the hand of a patrician even though he hailed from the barbaric North. Suddenly she smiled. But this he did not see for he was still intent upon the shoe, but she felt that those slender hands of his were singularly clumsy.
Now, the Prime Minister might water fifty rose trees and he would never get a speck of mould even on his shoe buckles. I suppose it is because the Prime Minister has learnt to be serious. Oh dear! I do wish I had an idea in my head!" "What are you saying?" asked the rose tree, shaking off the effects of the Prince's overwhelming attentions. "Why do you wish to have an idea in your head?"
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