United States or Finland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Theatres waxed and waned, and new stars came to the front who had still their laurels to win; people strove for cards to the Steven's Terrace, just back of Columbia College on Park Place. Bleecker Street was not out of date, though Mrs. Hamilton Fish had gone up to Stuyvesant Square, and was gathering about her a political clique.
A pile of sand, left from building the new ice-house, furnished material for innumerable forts and castles. There was a sunny field and a green, leafy orchard. How could they help but be happy? It was summer time and they were together. Steven's was more than a brotherly devotion.
They went together to the night nursery where the three children lay in their cots, the little red-haired girls awake and restless, and the dark-haired baby in his first sleep. They bent over them together. Mary's lips touched the red hair and the dark where Steven's lips had been. They spent the evening sitting by the fire in Rowcliffe's study. The doctor dozed.
He was faintly surprised. "What is it, then? Sit down and tell me." She sat down. They had Steven's table as a barrier between them. "You've been thinking of leaving Rathdale, haven't you?" she said. "I've been thinking of leaving it for the last seven years. But I haven't left it yet. I don't suppose I shall leave it now." "Even when you've got the chance?" "Even when I've got the chance."
When the boys turned their backs on Waddy the expedition carried with it vegetables enough to bribe all the goats in the province. The garden of Michael Devoy was a waste place, desolation brooded over the carrot beds of the Canns and the Sloans, and Mrs. Ben Steven's cabbage-patch lay in ruins.
And of course there was Steven, and Steven's misery which was more unbearable to her than her own. At least she thought it was more unbearable. She didn't ask herself how bearable it would have been if Steven's marriage had brought him a satisfaction that denied her and cast her out. For she was persuaded that Steven also had his consolation. He knew that she cared for him.
It was as if she had accused him of pretending to be sorry. He looked at her sharply. His romantic youth died in that look. Silence fell between them. But she was used to that. She even welcomed it. Steven's silences brought him nearer to her than his speech. Essy came in with the tea-tray. He lingered uneasily after the meal, glancing now and then at the clock. She was used to that, too.
She laughed at that. "I'll take my chances on the fire. I seem to see a lot of good firemen around. If there is a battle you will see that Steven's in a safe place, won't you?" "In a space attack, there are no safe places. I'll keep him with me." The young Count of Ravary wanted to know which ship he would serve on when the attack came. "Well, you won't be on any ship, Count.
As the question passed around the table, Steven's thoughts went back to the year before, when their little family had all been together. He remembered how pretty his mother had looked that morning in her dark-blue dress. There was a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums blooming on the table, and a streak of sunshine, falling across them and on Robin's hair, seemed to turn them both to gold.
That this, and not the elder Breughel's, is the original of the picture in Steven's L'Atelier is clear at the first glance, the warm tonality having been accurately reproduced and even the drawing of the tree branches, which differs much in the two museum pictures having conformed precisely to that in the copy by the younger Breughel.
Word Of The Day