Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
Sitting here with Hallie one late afternoon, while sunlight was still among the housetops, but with the convent garden in shadow so deep it looked like a reflection in water, I saw the procession of nuns, slim, black figures and bending heads, winding slowly through it. The sight touched me with a very melancholy yet not quite unhappy feeling.
I remember sitting up with Hallie through the earlier part of that evening, and with a sort of worship, looking for the first time at women with uncovered necks and arms emerging white as wax from their diaphanous or glittering gowns. To me they were radiant, transported to a sphere of existence beyond my own, something I never would attain to. I recall them as a vague, dreamlike spectacle.
His wife's attitude in these new circumstances of the return of her aunt's protégée struck him as wholly unjustified and unreasonable. "You're not quite yourself when you talk that way, Hallie. Professor Kelton was one of Aunt Sally's oldest friends; old people have a habit of going back to the friends of their youth; there's nothing strange in it.
Just think, Hallie, your mother knew his mother well, and he used to play with Estrella's brothers." Estrella flushed. "He hasn't been in our house since he was a little boy," she said angrily. "I wouldn't think of bowing to him on the street. He hasn't been received in good society for a long time." Hallie sagely shook her head.
Her son Hallie died, and he didn't hev no nice clo'es ter be laid out in, and she was agoin' to hev quite a funyral, so jest afore folks come, she slipped the surplus on ter him over his old clo'es, and then when 'twas over, she took it offen him again. He made a swell lookin' corpse. Bein' a neighbor we didn't go fer to ask her nuthin', but she give us the nut cakes.
"Yas, mar'm" chuckled the old man. "I had to be. I never would a-got him! Oh, I's tellin' de trufe, Miss Hallie. Dis' here ol' sinner tooken flewed off a boat what was comin' up de river. Yas'm. And he sure was old enough to know better." "And you saw him fly off the boat?" "Oh, yas'm. I seed him. I seed him," and Uncle Billy floundered for a moment, caught in his own trap.
"Keep yoah mouf shet much as you can when Mammy comes home to-night," he cautioned; "for I sut'n'ly don't want to ketch a lickin' on my buthday. It's mighty lucky the pan didn't get a hole knocked in her." Mammy came home just before dark. The children were on the fence waiting for her. John Jay felt sure that if Miss Hallie knew that it was his birthday she would send him something.
"Listen!" he said: Up from the valley floated the far mellow notes: I'm dreaming now of Hallie, sweet Hallie, For the thought of her is one that never dies. She's sleeping in the valley And the mocking bird is singing where she lies. Listen to the mocking bird singing o'er her grave, Listen to the mocking bird, where the weeping willows wave.
"Hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo!" came a sudden call from down in the road, and, turning, they saw Miss Hastings and Billy Westlake, who both waved their hands at the amphitheatre couple and came scrambling up the rocks. "Mr. Princeman and Mr. Tilloughby are looking for you everywhere, Hallie," said Miss Hastings to Miss Westlake. "You know you promised to make that famous salad dressing of yours.
"It's all in the paper, how they found him Mr. Rood, I mean." "It's here," Estrella said, sitting down on the other side of me, and unfolding the crumpled sheet she had been carrying rolled up in her hand. She and Hallie held it stretched out in front of me. The sight of Johnny Montgomery's name staring at me from the page made my heart beat a little.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking