United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at the door the grey girl gave Thyme's arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift kiss, and turned back up the stairs. "Aren't you coming?" shouted Martin. Her voice was heard answering from above: "No, not tonight." With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss. The two cousins walked out amongst the traffic.
"She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured. Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard saying: "She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation." Cecilia rose uneasily. These words concreted suddenly a wealth of half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter. This came of letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin!
Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed them to Martin. The young man, who had been observing negligently, touched Thyme's elbow. She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now turned. They went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little girl with an affection of the skin. The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.
And in Thyme's heart rose a feeling almost of hatred for this girl, who was so business-like in the presence of such sights and scents. The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she had been asleep. The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes. "Oh, do you mind if we come in a minute?" she said. "It would be so good of you. We're making a report."
What she did not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of the outrage inflicted on him by Thyme's action. With her being a woman the matter was more practical; she did not grasp, had never grasped, the architectural nature of Stephen's mind how really hurt he was by what did not seem to him in due and proper order.
When they had purchased a postal order for ten shillings, placed it in the envelope addressed to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, and passed the hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn, Martin said: "I'm going to see what that precious amateur has done about the baby. If he hasn't moved the girl, I expect to find things in a pretty mess." Thyme's face changed at once.
In Thyme's heart rose the passionate feeling, 'How disgusting! how disgusting! and since she did not dare to give expression to it, she bit her lips and turned her head from them, resenting, with all a young girl's horror, that her sex had given her away.
The Tree Mother put her hand on Wild Thyme's head and stood to watch the dancing. Her robe gleamed like frost, and her hair was a pool of light above her head. Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmm. Wild Thyme jumped back into the dance and the Tree Mother stood alone. But although she stood as still as a moonbeam under the tree, she made Eric think of dancing more than all the others put together.
"It seems so horrid," she said; "and father is not like other people." "He is not," said Stephen dryly; "we had a pretty good instance of that this evening. But Hilary and your sister are. There's something most distasteful to me, too, about Thyme's going about slumming. You see what she's been let in for this afternoon.
Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin. Letter follows explaining. Thyme," she had not even realised her little daughter's departure. She went up to Thyme's room at once, and opening all the drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by one. The many things she saw there allayed the first pangs of her disquiet.
Word Of The Day