United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There is no such person as Mr Null, or, at least, he is a mere gaseous myth, whom I married for the sake of the protection his name gave me." "This is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard," said Roberta. "You must tell me all about it." "I don't want to keep you up," said Annie, "you must be tired." "I am not tired," said Roberta, "for every particle of fatigue has flown away."
But she did not tell her so; it would have been useless. Mrs. Putney's note was an invitation to a family tea for the next evening. Putney met Annie at the door, and led her into the parlour beside the hall. He had a little crippled boy on his right arm, and he gave her his left hand.
Yes, she used to sing that when he went to see her on Sunday nights, before they were married, in her pink, plump, pretty days. Annie used to be very pretty. "Gave me her promise true," hummed the little fiddle. "That's a fact," said poor Annie's husband, jerking the words out under his hat, "and kept it too, she did." Ah, how Annie had kept it!
"Why, Aunt Margaret!" she cried, for Miss Jean was an independent young lady, by virtue of being the cleverest of the family. "Why, Aunt Margaret, I never dreamed we'd have to stay home, and I'd just love to go and Annie wants to go, too; don't you, Ann?"
"So I would, mother, if it had not been for those boys." "Your cousins, Annie?" "Cousins, mother! You never saw such young bears in all your life. They tormented me from morning till night." "But, Annie, I hope you have not offended" "Offended, mother? Aunt Maria thinks they're perfect, and so does uncle Joe. They'd let them pull the house down over their heads, you'd think."
Nor must my wife reader think hardly of Annie for having let him leave the house without any food, for he had stolen softly away, and closed the door as softly behind him, thinking how merrily they would eat together when he came back with his good news.
Every day when he went out Annie gave him an assuring smile, every day when he returned, she opened her eyes on him with the question in them she did not care to formulate; and every day she received in an answer an almost imperceptible negative shake of the head, that slight as it was, said despairingly, "I have not seen her."
Bolton told me you were very liberal," Annie faltered on; "but I didn't expect you as a But of course " "I read Shakespeare a great deal," said Mr. Peck. "I have never been in the theatre; but I should like to see one of his plays represented where it could cause no one to offend."
When the applause died away it was still not easy to hear; a boy in one of the trees called, "Louder!" and made some of the people laugh, but for the rest they were very orderly throughout. Toward the end of the fourth act Annie was startled by a child dashing itself against her knees, and breaking into a gurgle of shy laughter as children do.
Yet she had sustained not only his temptations, but another ordeal, so searching and terrible that it transformed her into a heroine, a being of superior clay to that of ordinary mortals. "It's her nature to be good, mine to be bad," he had said; "I'm a weed, she is a flower." But Annie herself had rudely dispelled this illusion.
Word Of The Day