United States or Moldova ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They sat at the table in the general sitting-room, hard at work, a lamp between them, for the gas-burners above were high for sewing, and their eyes were no longer so keen as they had been. Miss Deborah was "turning" a table-cloth; Miss Amilly was darning sundry holes in a pillow-case.
Gunnill pressing the point, however, she arose and began to set the table, the undue care with which she smoothed out the creases of the table-cloth, and the mathematical exactness with which she placed the various articles, all being so many extra smarts in his wound. When she finally placed on the table enough food for a dozen people he began to show signs of a little spirit.
She sat; she walked; she prayed; she carried about an orb that was almost too heavy to hold; the Archbishop of Canterbury came and crushed a ring upon the wrong finger, so that she was ready to cry out with the pain; old Lord Rolle tripped up in his mantle and fell down the steps as he was doing homage; she was taken into a side chapel, where the altar was covered with a table-cloth, sandwiches, and bottles of wine; she perceived Lehzen in an upper box and exchanged a smile with her as she sat, robed and crowned, on the Confessor's throne.
The principal dish was dried meat, but there were luxuries in the shape of sandwiches, cakes, crackers, and tea and coffee, which the cook had found in the pack-saddle, and which he did not hesitate to appropriate. The table was the ground under one of the trees, and the grass did duty both as table-cloth and dishes. "Now, boys," said the chief, "here's a dinner fit for a king.
At this moment Nanon, Madame Grandet, and Eugenie, who had all three been thinking with a shudder of the old man's return, heard the knock whose echoes they knew but too well. "There's papa!" said Eugenie. She removed the saucer filled with sugar, leaving a few pieces on the table-cloth; Nanon carried off the egg-cup; Madame Grandet sat up like a frightened hare.
The table-cloth was stained with brown circles from the porter pots, and was otherwise dirty; the forks were pewter, and there were no napkins; but the meat was as good as you would get anywhere, so were the vegetables, the beer also; and the cost was about half that of the most homely chop-houses he had hitherto patronised.
The two hopeless, middle-aged men on either side of him stared into vacancy as, with dirty hands on which the veins stood out, they played wrong basses to the melody on their guitars. Suddenly Hermione was seized with a sensation of fear. "Let us go. We had better go. Ah!" She cried out. The wind, returning, had caught the white table-cloth. It flew up towards her, then sank down.
A bustling clerk or stenographer, entering with paper or memorandum, would find her bent over her desk, pencil in hand, absorbed in a rough drawing that seemed to bear no relation to the skirt of the day. The margin of her morning paper was filled with queer little scrawls by the time she reached the office. She drew weird lines with her fork on the table-cloth at lunch.
I've done that seven miles in all weathers, and a sweet seven miles it is, but I never came anything like the pace we did to-day. Your good health, Miss Kate; I'll have a fresh team put together for you to-morrow, and a better cigar to smoke than the one I gave you to-day." I could willingly have sunk into the earth nay, crept under the table-cloth anything to hide my dishonoured head.
THEN the Doctor asked Long Arrow if he knew what fire was, explaining it to him by pictures drawn on the buckskin table-cloth. Long Arrow said he had seen such a thing coming out of the tops of volcanoes; but that neither he nor any of the Popsipetels knew how it was made. "Poor perishing heathens!" muttered Bumpo. "No wonder the old chief died of cold!"
Word Of The Day