United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers and let her get upstairs? David meanwhile hung about the kitchen. He would have liked to ask Uncle Reuben about the pool and 'Lias's story, but Hannah was bustling about, and he never mentioned 'Lias in her hearing.
If you've ever been a little girl you know about that. One window of the small house was dimly lighted, they found, when they came in sight of it, and they thrilled with excitement and joyful alarm. Suppose 'Lias's dreadful stepfather should come out and yell at them!
Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?" Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind. "Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me about Romanzo?
Spaces of shining water, crossed by ships with decks manned by heroes for whom the blue distance was for ever revealing new lands to conquer, new adventures to affront; the plumed Indian in his forest divining the track of his enemy from a displaced leaf or twig; the Zealots of Jehovah urging a last frenzied defence of Jehovah's Sanctuary against the Roman host; and now, last of all, the gloom and flames, the infernal palaces, the towering fiends, the grandiose and lumbering war of 'Paradise Lost': these things, together with the names and suggestions of 'Lias's talk that whole crew of shining, fighting, haranguing men and women whom the old dreamer was for ever bringing into weird action on the moorside lived in the boy's mind, and in any pause of silence, as we have said, emerged and took possession.
He saw her weaver's hand folded round 'Lias's, and he could hear 'Lias speaking in a weak thread of a voice, but still sanely and rationally. It gave him a start to catch some of the words he had been so long accustomed to the visionary 'Lias. 'Have yo rested, Margaret? 'Ay, dear love, three hours an moor. Betsy James wor here; she saw yo wanted for nowt. She's a gude creetur, ain't she, 'Lias?
Many meetings with 'Lias on the moorside, which the old seer made alive for both of them the plundering of 'Lias's books, whence he had drawn the brown 'Josephus' in his pocket these had done more than anything else to stock the boy's head with its present strange jumble of knowledge and ideas. Knowledge, indeed, it scarcely was, but rather the materials for a certain kind of excitement.
Nobody said another word about how to give the clothes to 'Lias, till, just as the girls were going away, Betsy said, walking along with the two older ones, "Say, don't you think it'd be fun to go some evening after dark and leave the clothes on 'Lias's doorstep, and knock and run away quick before anybody comes to the door?"
October brought a spell of wintry weather; and one day, as he was bringing the sheep home, he met old Margaret, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him. 'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, Davy, my lad? Yo might leeten him up a bit, an' he wants it, t' Lord knows. He's been fearfu' bad in his sperrits this summer.
Whether it were Elizabeth wrangling with Mary Stuart, or Cromwell marshalling his Ironsides, or Buckingham falling under the assassin's dagger at 'Lias's feet, or Napoleon walking restlessly up and down the deck of the 'Bellerophon, 'Lias rated them every one. He was lord of a shadow world, wherein he walked with kings and queens, warriors and poets, putting them one and all superbly to rights.
Poor soul! she had lived in this tumult of 'Lias's fancies year after year, till the solid world often turned about her. And she, all the while, so simple, so sane the ordinary good woman, with the ordinary woman's hunger for the common blessings of life a little love, a little chat, a little prosaic well-being! She had had two sons they were gone.
Word Of The Day