Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
He had not troubled to lower his voice, and as he and Darden were now themselves within the shadow of the oak, the schoolmaster overheard him and answered for himself. "Your honor need not fear my company," he said, in his slow and lifeless tones. "I am walking, and I take the short cut through the woods. Good-day, worthy Gideon. Madam Deborah and Audrey, good-day."
Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away and her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let her pass, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the trader could enter the house. There were bolts to its heavy door, and Hugon might do as he had done before, and talk his heart out upon the wrong side of the wood.
This in answer to an inarticulate sound from the girl. The schoolmaster answered for her: "Mr. Marmaduke Haward has not gone with the coach. Perhaps he only waited until the other gentlefolk should be gone. Here he comes." The sward without the gates was bare of all whose presence mattered, and Haward had indeed reëntered the churchyard, and was walking toward them. Darden went to meet him.
She was so near that she could hear the words of the reader, and she knew the piece that he was reading; for you must remember that she was not untaught, and that Darden had books. "'When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll, And swelling organs lift the rising soul, One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight'"
Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile with Audrey." He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. "I have, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half an hour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to fetch you in."
"Seven of the vestry?" said his wife, after a pause. "Who are they?" Darden told her. "If Mr. Haward" she began slowly, her green eyes steady upon the situation. "There's not one of that seven would care to disoblige him. I warrant you he could make them face about. They say he knew the Governor in England, too; and there's his late gift to the college, the Commissary wouldn't forget that. If Mr.
Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back, unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household. But Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably through life with very little appeal to her head.
Darden stumbled upstairs to bed. Mistress Deborah's voice was raised in shrill reproach, and the drunken minister answered her with oaths. The small house rang with their quarrel, but Audrey listened with indifference; not trembling and stopping her ears, as once she would have done.
The Reverend Gideon Darden, quitting with an oath the company of his brethren, came down the aisle, and, pushing past his wife, took his stand in the pew beside the orphan who had lived beneath his roof, whom during many years he had cursed upon occasion and sometimes struck, and whom he had latterly made his tool, "Never mind him, Audrey, my girl," he said, and put an unsteady hand upon her shoulder.
Peter Melcombe and her boy, they were quite silent, till a pause took place and the little Anastasia lifted up her small voice and distinguished herself by saying "Fader, Peter's dot a dhost in his darden." "Got a ghost!" exclaimed John Mortimer, with a look of dismay; for ghosts were the last things he wished his children to hear anything about.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking