United States or Belarus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Emily was not unsympathetic, but she had had a rather wearing life. Her love of toys and of little children had kept her human, otherwise she had a feeling that she might have hardened into chill spinsterhood. As Jean disappeared through the door, the elder woman moved about the shop, setting it in order for the night.
He dared be glad of this, but he could not grasp it, unless she were vowed to spinsterhood by some irrevocable iron of her will; or perhaps some king of men had come, and she had given her word.... Bedient could not understand how any discerning masculine mind could look upon Beth Truba, and go his way without determining his chance.
It was evidently Miss Hathaway's treasure box, put away in the attic when spinsterhood was confirmed by the fleeting years. On top, folded carefully in a sheet, was a gown of white brocade, short-waisted and quaint, trimmed with pearl passementerie. The neck was square, cut modestly low, and filled in with lace of a delicate, frosty pattern Point d'Alencon.
As this second suitor was very nearly as rich as the first, Ellen found her fate alleviated by the entire and permanent removal of her parents' displeasure. She became now a mere object of pity, mingled at times with contempt for her folly in dooming herself to a sterile spinsterhood; for it was clear that Frank and she could never hope to marry, however much writing-paper they might waste.
The words brought tears of feeling into the eyes of some; but Jane Mohun could not help observing, "Ah! I was afraid you were going to hold up to us the example of the ants and bees, where the old maids do all the working and fighting and governing! Don't make Gillian regret that she is falling away from the spinsterhood." "Come, Aunt Jane, Bessie never did make it the praise of spinsters.
In the end, suddenly terrorized by the first faint shadows of spinsterhood, she turns to the ultimate numskull and marries him out of hand. This, allowing for class modifications, is almost the normal history of a marriage, or, more accurately, of the genesis of a marriage, under Protestant Christianity.
She seemed infinitely removed from him, traveling her lonely road past loving outstretched hands and facing ahead toward well, toward fifty years of spinsterhood. The sheer waste of it made him shudder. "You're cold, too, Wallie," she said gently. "You'd better go home." He was about to repudiate the idea scornfully, when he sneezed! She got up at once and held out her hand.
While the great drum-like voice was thus rolling and booming, George Lovegrove had shaken hands with Serena. But there was none of the accustomed respectful enthusiasm in his greeting. He wore a preoccupied and dejected air. For once he looked upon that pearl of spinsterhood with a lack-lustre and indifferent eye.
Always she saw the girls of twenty-two getting tired, the women of twenty-eight getting dry and stringy, the women of thirty-five in a solid maturity of large-bosomed and widowed spinsterhood, the old women purring and catty and tragic.... She herself was twenty-eight now, and she knew that she was growing sallow, that the back of her neck ached more often, and that she had no release in sight save the affably dull Mr.
On the contrary, it is in such cases as that of the worker-bee that we find the warrant in apparent contradiction for our notion of the meaning of the individual, and also the key to the problem placed before us amongst ourselves by the case of inevitable spinsterhood.
Word Of The Day