United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The reflection was blown out of him by the expansion of his feelings. Seventy pounds a year on clothes!... He too was serious. Now, James Ollerenshaw was not the first person whom Helen's passion for clothes had driven into indiscretions. Her mother, for example, had done battle with that passion, and had been defeated with heavy loss.
"Very well indeed, thank you," she replied, primly, but nicely. Upon this, they both of them sought to recover from an affair that had occurred in the late seventies. In the late seventies James Ollerenshaw had been a young-old man of nearly thirty.
In the Five Towns, where the taste for classical music is highly developed, the C Minor Symphony on a single cornet is as common as "Robin Adair" on a full brass band. James Ollerenshaw played the Hallelujah Chorus with much feeling and expression.
It was apparent that, whatever he thought of her, she would not be disturbed or abashed. She was utterly at her ease. She could not, indeed, have recalled the moment when she had not been at her ease. She sat in the front room with all the external symptoms of being at home. This was what chiefly surprised James Ollerenshaw in his grand guests they all took his front room for granted.
"I don't say," James Ollerenshaw proceeded, in accents calculated to prove to her that he had just as great a horror of sentimentality as she had "I don't say as you wouldn't make a rare good mistress o' Wilbraham Hall. I don't say as I wouldn't like to see you in it. But when a man reaches my age, he's fixed in his habits like.
This spout began with a bold curve from the projecting horizontal spout under the eaves, and made another curve at the ground into a hollow earthenware grid with very tiny holes. Helen looked delicious in the yard, gazing pensively at the slothful rhododendron while James Ollerenshaw opened his door.
He was always referred to as Jimmy Ollerenshaw, and he may strike you as what is known as a "character," an oddity. His sudden appearance at a Royal Levée would assuredly have excited remark, and even in Bursley he diverged from the ordinary; nevertheless, I must expressly warn you against imagining Mr. Ollerenshaw as an oddity.
"It looks to me," said James, "as if your plan for knocking their two heads together wasna' turning out as you meant it, missis." "And what's more," said she, "I do believe that Emanuel wants me to buy this place so that when I'm gone he can make a big splash here with your niece and your money, Mr. Ollerenshaw! What do you think of that?"
Buchanan had been giving a whist drive. There were sundry Swetnams among the string. And the whole string was merry and talkative. It was a fine night. The leading pearls of the string bore down on the middle-aged pair, and peered, and passed. "Good-night, Mrs. Prockter. Good-night, Mr. Ollerenshaw." Then another couple did the same. "Good-night, Mrs. Prockter. Good-night, Mr. Ollerenshaw."
But James Ollerenshaw did not wish his teeth stopped, nor yet extracted. He had excellent teeth. And, in common with all men who have never taken thirty consecutive repasts alone with the same woman, he knew how to treat women, how to handle them the trout! He stood up. He raised all his body. Helen raised only her eyebrows. "Helen Rathbone!" Such was the exordium.
Word Of The Day