Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
There were little movements in Cis's room, and he felt sure she was not asleep. Soon he had proof of it. For peering up carefully from under lowered lids, he saw her door slowly open; next, she came to stand in it, dimly outlined in her faded cotton kimono. She had something white in one hand. This she waved up and down in a noiseless signal. He did not stir.
Humfrey had the history of his voyage to narrate to tell of little Diccon's gallant doings, and to exalt Sir Francis Drake's skill and bravery, and at last to let it ooze out, under Cis's eager questioning, that when his captain had died of fever on the Hispaniola coast, and they had been overtaken by a tornado, Sir Francis had declared that it was Humfrey's skill and steadfastness which had saved the ship and crew.
The Queen then inquired into the circumstances of the wedding festivities with the interest of one to whom most of the parties were more or less known, and who seldom had the treat of a little feminine gossip. She asked who had been "her little Cis's partner," and when she heard of Babington, she said, "Ah ha, then, the poor youth has made his peace with my Lord?"
One-Eye bidden a brave good-by, one of Johnnie's first jobs had been the rearranging of Cis's closet room. Though he still felt that he could not take over for his own use the little place which was sacred to her, nevertheless he had considered it a fit and proper spot in which to enshrine his seven volumes.
So Barber, muttering something about leaving her a clear coast, scuffed his way out. As the hall door closed, Johnnie buried his small nose in Cis's pillow. He was wounded in pride rather than in body. He hated to be found on the floor at the toe of Big Tom's boot. He had listened to the conversation while lying face downward on Cis's bed but with his head raised like a turtle's.
Late that night, in the closet-room, with the door shut and a stub of candle lighted, Johnnie heard Cis's story of what had happened in the flat following her return from the factory, her lunch still in its neat camera-box. "I I just couldn't believe it was so!" she whispered, ready to weep at the mere recollection of her shock and grief.
Cis's ill humour never lasted long, and she suddenly broke in, "O mother, Master Eyre saith there is a marvellous cavern near his father's house, all full of pendants from the roof like a minster, and great sheeted tables and statues standing up, all grand and ghostly on the floor, far better than in this Pool's Hole. He says his father will have it lighted up if we will ride over and see it."
Forgetting what a comfort they had been to him the evening before, this while feeling boyishly ashamed and foolish at having had them with him, in a panic he caught them up and flung them, willy-nilly, out of sight upon Cis's couch; after which, looking sheepish, and wondering if Big Tom had, by any chance, seen them, he put away his bedding, filled the teakettle, and reached down the package of oatmeal.
Each one of these she named with a girl's name, Johnnie assisting; and the two were able, by the curl of a petal, or the number of leaves on a stem, or some other tiny sign, to tell Cora from Alice, and Elaine from Blanchefleur, and the Princess Mary from Buddir al Buddoor, as well as to recognize Rebecca, and Julia, and Anastasia, and Gertie, and June and so on through a list that made little godmothers to the rosebuds out of Cis's favorite acquaintances at the paper-box factory.
Next day, with Cis's wash swinging overhead in a long, white line, he finished Aladdin and took up Robinson Crusoe. And with the new book there opened to him still another life. Swiftly the palaces of Cathay melted away. And Johnnie, in company with several fighting men, was pacing the deck of a storm-tossed ship, with a savage-infested shore to lee.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking