United States or Kosovo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Unsheltered, among the bushes, the wallet of the Banded Epeira, when the July heat arrives, splits under the effort of the inner air. The delivery is effected by an explosion of the dwelling. A very small part of the family are expelled with the flow of tawny floss; the vast majority remain in the bag, which is ripped open, but still bulges with eiderdown.
She felt hot, and threw back her eiderdown. The other girls were sleeping quietly, and the rain was still beating against the window in heavy showers, for it was a stormy night. The door of the bedroom stood wide open. What was that sound coming up the stairs from the hall below? It was certainly not the ticking of the clock. It seemed more like muffled and stealthy footsteps.
"Then the old woman should let us keep it for you, instead of hanging on to it herself," said Sörine. Ditte was terrified. That was exactly what Granny was afraid of, that Sörine should get hold of it. "Granny has hidden it safely," said she. "Oh, has she, and where? in the eiderdown of course!" "No!" Ditte assured her, shaking her head vehemently.
A loose board creaked in the floor, or was it a door which opened and closed softly? Perhaps it was nothing after all. And she closed her eyes and drew the eiderdown quilt close about her shoulders. No; there it was again. A distinct footfall. She raised herself on her elbow and peered into the shadows.
The reason was into which he had lived, quite intimately, by the end of a quarter-of-an-hour that just this truth of their safety offered it now a kind of unexampled receptacle, letting it spread and spread, but at the same time elastically enclosing it, banking it in, for softness, as with billows of eiderdown.
It sinks and touches a point; it retreats, sinks again and touches another point, first here, then there, describing inextricable zigzags. At the same time, the hind-legs tread the material emitted. The result is no longer a stuff, but a felt, a blanketing. Around the satin capsule, which contains the eggs, is the eiderdown destined to keep out the cold.
It isn't safe, it'll fall at any moment. There's going to be more of this it isn't finished." Fong, without answering, set the chair down beside her, taking from its seat a cloak and an eiderdown coverlet. He and Lorry wrapped her in the cloak and disposing her in the chair tucked the coverlet round her knees.
And with amazing swiftness she emptied her laundry bag on the bed, covered the contents with her eiderdown, spread out two dainty sets of immaculate French underwear, and was seated with a darning-basket and a pair of stockings in her hand, before the astonished Judith could take in the significance of her actions. "Come in," said Genevieve sweetly as Miss Watson knocked.
See: in the middle of the eiderdown hangs a cylindrical pocket, round at the bottom, cut square at the top and closed with a padded lid. It is made of extremely fine satin; it contains the Epeira's eggs, pretty little orange-coloured beads, which, glued together, form a globule the size of a pea. This is the treasure to be defended against the asperities of the winter.
There was no money not as much as a farthing was to be found, in spite of their searching, and the splitting up of the eiderdown and the house was mortgaged up to the hilt. They then agreed to give Sörine and her husband what little there was, on condition that they provided the funeral. On this occasion, Sörine did not spare money, she wanted the funeral to be talked about.
Word Of The Day