Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
To him Ralph knew that he could tell the whole story. The Sciennes was on the very edge of the green fields.
No doubt a woman would have picked out the fundamental sameness at a glance. But it did very well for men, who only care for the effect. Even the Advocate would look in on his way to or from the Sciennes for a cup of tea from Irma. And in our little parlour he would sit and rap on his snuffbox, talking all the while, and forgetting to go till it was dark as gentle and human as any common man.
So, in spite of John Bairdieson's utmost endeavours, and waiting only to put his clothes together, Ralph took his way over to the Sciennes, where his uncle, the professor, lived in a new house with his three daughters, Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-happuch. The professor had always been very kind to Ralph.
I was marching along to our rendezvous with Freddy and Amelia at the crossing from Archers' Hall to the Sciennes, when all of a sudden whom should we meet right in the face but my rosy-cheeked, bunchy little employer my Lord Advocate in person, all shining as if he had been polished, his face smiling and smirking like a newly-oiled picture, and on his arm, but towering above him, a thin, dusky-skinned woman, plainly dressed, and with an enormous bonnet on her head, obviously of her own manufacture a sort of tangle of black, brown and green which really had to be seen to be believed.
Kezia was counted the beauty of the family, and was much looked up to by her elder and younger sisters. These three girls had always made much of Ralph, ever since he used to play about the many garrets and rooms of their old mansion beneath the castle, before they moved out to the new house at the Sciennes.
But Lady Frances had very deliberately turned about and was walking, without the least greeting or farewell, in the direction of her own house of Sciennes. "There goes a Kirkpatrick," said the Advocate, tapping his box cynically; "cry with them, they will hunt your enemies till they drop. Cry off with them, and it's little you will see of them but the back of their hand."
She set her cap at John Home when he came home from London. She would never even allow that Davie Hume was an atheist, whilk was as clear as that I hae a nose to my face! Off with you to Fanny's at the Sciennes.
But what was my surprise when, as soon as we were on the cobble stones, the Lady Frances turned sharply upon Irma, and said, quite in the style of my Lady Kirkpatrick, "And now, Irma Maitland, since your husband has no house or any place to take you to, you had better come to my house in the Sciennes till he can make proper arrangements.
Also the Dean sings an "Amen" to his praises of Irma, but neither of the Kirkpatricks has ever deigned to cross our doorstep. "They were glad to be rid of you!" I tell Irma. "Dear place!" she answers. And she does not mean either the house at Sciennes or the Kirkpatrick mansion near the Water of Leith.
Make a better use of your youth than maybe I have done. If ye need a helping hand, there's my sister Frances out at the Sciennes. She's fair crammed like a Strasburg goose wi' the belles-lettres. She will maybe never let ye within the door, but a shilling a week of outdoor relief ye are sure of for she sets up for being full of the milk of human kindness.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking