United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We concluded to hurry away by the next steamer, if at that late hour we could get passage. We were all in a bustle. The last shoppings for aunts, cousins, and little folks were to be done by us all. The Palais Royal was to be rummaged; bronzes, vases, statuettes, bonbons, playthings all that the endless fertility of France could show was to be looked over for the "folks at home."
When, after their respective shoppings were completed, Maxwell rejoined Mrs. Burke, and they had started on a brisk trot towards home, she remarked: "So you have had a visit with the Senior Warden." "Yes, and with Miss Bascom. She came into the office while I was there." "Hm! Well! She's one of your flock!" "Would you call Miss Bascom one of my lambs?" asked Donald mischievously.
In the well-stocked greenhouse Miss Pennycuick, who was fond of flowers, obtained 'wrinkles' that she declared would be most valuable to her in the management of her Redford houses which she implied that he must see; in the interview with the carriage horse Rose had a little brougham, not, as her sisters supposed, for paying calls on other drapers' wives, which she had small leisure for, but for shoppings and airings and taking children to dentists and pantomimes Miss Pennycuick was instructive in her turn, feeling legs and advising about firing and bandages with the recognised authority of an expert.
The single street, sun-covered, sleepy, empty save for a brewer's dray and tax-cart or two standing before the solid Georgian portals of the White Lion Inn, for a straggling tail of children bearing home small shoppings and jugs of supper beer, for a flock of gray geese proceeding with suggestively self-righteous demeanour along the very middle of the roadway and lowering long necks to hiss defiance at the passer-by, and for an old black retriever dozing peacefully beneath one of the rustling sycamores in front of Josiah Appleyard, the saddler's shop all these, as she looked at them, became uncertain in outline, reeled before Honoria's eyes.
We concluded to hurry away by the next steamer, if at that late hour we could get a passage. We were all in a bustle. The last shoppings for aunts, cousins, and little folks were to be done by us all. The Palais Royal was to be rummaged; bronzes, vases, statuettes, bonbons, playthings, all that the endless fertility of France could show, was to be looked over for the 'folks at home.
The church clocks had struck three; the crowds of gentlemen returning to business, after their early dinners, had disappeared within offices and warehouses; the streets were clear and quiet, and ladies were venturing to sally forth for their afternoon shoppings and their afternoon calls. Slowly, slowly, along the streets, elbowed by life at every turn, a little funeral wound its quiet way.
"I found these little rosebuds in flower still, though it is the end of November. Such brave little darlings, aren't they? One for your button-hole, Major Benjy? And then I must do my little shoppings or Withers will scold me Withers is so severe with me, keeps me in such order! If you are going into the town, will you take me with you? I will put on my hat."
Listlessly she sat there, on the ground, her hands clasped round her knees, while her aunt Shaw did small shoppings, and Edith and Captain Lennox rode far and wide on shore and inland. The nurses, sauntering on with their charges, would pass and repass her, and wonder in whispers what she could find to look at so long, day after day.
Word Of The Day