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Then she knew he was fumbling for and finding some shining fragment and scoring it down the yellowing hair, and unconsciously her voice forsook the wild war-tunes and drifted into the half-gay, half-melancholy Rosin the Bow. Suddenly she woke pierced with a pang, and the daggered tooth penetrating her flesh; dreaming of safety, she had ceased singing and lost it.
The ladies entertained us with half-gay, half-pathetic stories of the way home-life had run on during the long campaigns, and of the ingenuity they were obliged to use to supply the place of tasteful articles of dress or adornment when the blockade had become stringent, and when each little community was thrown almost wholly upon its own resources.
He was now at ease about Margaret, and knew he had been harsh to another of his motherless girls. "Ah! we must send her to the infant-school, to learn 'this is my right hand, and this is my left," said he, in his half-gay, half-sad manner. "I was very stupid," said Ethel. "Poor child!" said her papa, "she is worse off than I am. If I have but one hand left, she has two left hands."
He spoke with nothing of the half-gay, half-caressing authority with which he was wont to turn a pretty girl to his mind, but timidly rather, and kept his eyes fixed on the mare's nodding head, hooded with snow. "No, I must see Burr's mother," replied Madelon. "But your folks will be expecting you, won't they?" persisted Jim Otis.
The air around him had become pure and rarified: that horrible stench of powder and smoke and blood no longer struck his nostrils it was roses, roses all around him crimson roses sweet and caressing and fragrant with soft, velvety petals that brushed against his cheek and from somewhere close by came a dreamy melody, the half-sad, half-gay lilt of an intoxicating dance.
Vital comfort it seemed to me then: I read them in after years; they were kind letters enough pleasing letters, because composed by one well pleased; in the two last there were three or four closing lines half-gay, half-tender, "by feeling touched, but not subdued."
Some persons grow angry with him for a certain tone of half-gay, half-sad, allusive tenderness, when he speaks of Oxford and the country round Oxford. I do not think there is anything unpleasing in this. So did Catullus talk of Sirmio; Horace of his Farm; Milton of "Deva's wizard-stream"; Landor of Sorrento and Amalfi.
The sharp, steel click of the locks was perfectly audible through the din of the cannon. The signal officer looked at her; and her face was whiter than his. "You are Warren Moray I think," she said. His eyes glimmered like a bayonet in sunlight; then the old half-gay, half-defiant smile flickered over his face. "Special Messenger," he said, "you come as a dark envoy for me.
For a time he looked steadily upon them; then, turning on his side, he drew his harvest hat over his eyes and began a story of his early adventures behind the hounds, speaking in half-gay, half-bitter tones. In the mild autumn weather a faint haze overhung the landscape, changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell.
"But we are not going to forego the honeymoon," Will said on their first evening, as he and Daisy stood together in the ivy-covered porch. She laughed that little laugh of hers half-gay, half-sad, that seemed like a reminiscence of more mirthful days. "Isn't this romantic enough for you?" He slipped his arm about her waist. "I'm not altogether sure that I did right to let you come here," he said.
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