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The Pomfrets were quite different sort of people restless, self-seeking; one of them had been a favourite of Henry VIII." It was clear that William Oke had no feeling of having any Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with an evident family dislike the dislike of an Oke, one of the old, honourable, modest stock, which had quietly done its duty, for a family of fortune-seekers and Court minions.
I looked at him. It was clear that he had no notion what he was saying. The dark-green bines were covered with fruit; and only yesterday he himself had informed me that he had not seen such a profusion of hops for many years. I did not answer, and we walked on. A cart met us in a dip of the road, and the carter touched his hat and greeted Mr. Oke.
"My wife," he suddenly added, "is a remarkable woman. I don't know whether you will think her handsome, she isn't exactly, you know. But she's awfully strange," and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh and frowned that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an expression of opinion had cost him a great deal. It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career.
Letters arrived every other day from the theatrical cousin, whose only objection was that Okehurst was too remote a locality for an entertainment in which he foresaw great glory to himself. And every now and then there would arrive some young gentleman or lady, whom Alice Oke had sent for to see whether they would do. I saw very plainly that the performance would never take place, and that Mrs.
Oke Oke of Okehurst, as the people down there called him was horribly shy, consumed with a fear of making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then thought. But that sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered that, although it was doubtless increased by the presence of a total stranger, it was inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife.
"Come," she said, after a minute, "I want to show you why I believe in Christopher Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow room." What Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow room was a large bundle of papers, some printed and some manuscript, but all of them brown with age, which she took out of an old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet.
A man is surely not responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals with as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all other human creatures. So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, bizarre personality.
Oke as if I had been in love with her; and I was not in the least in love. I neither dreaded parting from her, nor felt any pleasure in her presence. I had not the smallest wish to please or to gain her notice. But I had her on the brain. I pursued her, her physical image, her psychological explanation, with a kind of passion which filled my days, and prevented my ever feeling dull.
The twenty-fourth sovereign, Ninken, was the elder of the two brothers, Oke and Woke, whose escape from the murderous ambition of the Emperor Yuryaku and their ultimate restoration to princely rank have been already described. He succeeded to the throne after the death of his younger brother, and occupied it for ten years of a most uneventful reign.
"The sun sinks to rest at night and the birds go to sleep. If we intend to hunt we must begin now." "It's always the way," returned the boy with an air of discontent; "whenever a fellow gets into a state of extreme jollity there's sure to be something bothersome to come and interrupt us. Obfusticate your faculties with some more smoke, Oke, till Billie and I finish our tea.
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