United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she guessed it to signify Diggory Venn. When the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during the last month had inquired where Venn was to be found, people replied, "On Egdon Heath."
Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any person who has handled it half an hour. A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. That blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began.
You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all." "Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes." "Nonsense. All that reddlemen do is sell reddle. You see all these bags at the back of my cart? They are not full of little boys only full of red stuff."
You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all." "Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes." "Nonsense. All that reddlemen do is sell reddle. You see all these bags at the back of my cart? They are not full of little boys only full of red stuff."
"You remain near this part?" she asked with more interest. "Yes, I have business here." "Not altogether the selling of reddle?" "It has nothing to do with that." "It has to do with Miss Yeobright?" Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, "Yes, miss; it is on account of her." "On account of your approaching marriage with her?" Venn flushed through his stain.
"I was so alarmed!" said Thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "I couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! It seemed supernatural." "I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas," said Venn. "It was a profitable trade, and I found that by that time I had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime.
"You remain near this part?" she asked with more interest. "Yes, I have business here." "Not altogether the selling of reddle?" "It has nothing to do with that." "It has to do with Miss Yeobright?" Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, "Yes, miss; it is on account of her." "On account of your approaching marriage with her?" Venn flushed through his stain.
Since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and Thomasin had not met till today. During the interval he had shifted his position even further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances still.
But the sale of reddle was not Diggory's primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of his class had gone into winter quarters. Eustacia looked at the lonely man. Wildeve had told her at their last meeting that Venn had been thrust forward by Mrs. Yeobright as one ready and anxious to take his place as Thomasin's betrothed.
Between us the thin red soil of the ridge was heaped in mounds, and its stain streaked our clothes and faces. On one of these mounds lay a spade and two picks, a pair of tongs, an old sack, dyed in its original service of holding sheep's reddle, and, on the sack, the carcase of our badger, its grey hairs messed with blood about the snout.
Word Of The Day