Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
The sun beat on her head and she put up the parasol, which through all her trouble she had grasped firmly in her hand. Even under these dreadful circumstances, with the children lost, and the certainty of her step-mother's wrath before her, there was joy in carrying a parasol like that. By and by she met a farmer with a yoke of oxen.
I know your infamy, and her infamy, and the position in which, thanks to you and to her, I now stand. Reproaches would be wasted words, addressed to such a man as you are. I write these lines to tell you that I have placed myself under my step-mother's protection in London. It is useless to attempt to follow me.
Her healthy and straightforward youth had little patience with her step-mother's unreasonable caprices. For her illness she had every sympathy, but for the morbid nervousness which seemed to accompany it, none at all. These constant headaches, the increasing nervous irritability from which Mrs. Coombe suffered lay like a shadow over the house.
Seeing me treated with contempt, and always being fed and dressed better, my sister conceived a contemptuous opinion of me, that proved an obstacle to all affection; and my father, hearing continually of my faults, began to consider me as a curse entailed on him for his sins: he was therefore easily prevailed on to bind me apprentice to one of my step-mother's friends, who kept a slop-shop in Wapping.
Then her hair would not on any account lie straight, but disposed itself in dainty tendrils and love-locks over her forehead, which gave her almost a childish look, and was a serious trouble to Miss Kitty herself, who preferred her step-mother's abundant flaxen plaits, and did not know the charm that those soft rings of curling hair lent to her irregular, little face.
The room next the foot of the stair, and opposite her step-mother's, was the spare room, with which she associated ideas of state and grandeur: where better could she begin than at the guest-chamber? There! Could it be? Yes! Through the chink of the scarce-closed door she saw light. Either he was already there or there they were expecting him.
Thus it happened that as the rooms became crowded, and half the smartest people in London surged and swayed upon the staircase, he lost sight of the face he loved for a considerable period, and was able to devote much real energy to the success of his step-mother's ball, uninfluenced by the distraction of Miss Brace's presence. This young lady's movements, however, were not unobserved.
She thrust the paper upon her step-mother's knee and pointed with a finger that shook uncontrollably at a brief announcement in the society column. "We are requested to state that the announcement in yesterday's issue that the marriage arranged between Viscount Merrivale and Miss Hilary St. Orme would not take place was erroneous.
When I reached my step-mother's bed-chamber, the heavy curtain of padded repp, which was suspended for the prevention of such draughts as might be smuggled in through key-holes, or other minute openings caused by an ill-fitting door, was drawn quite across the entrance, and in my hasty and unforeseeing impatience I pushed it rudely aside with rough hands and admitted myself within the sacred precincts, just in time to see myself branded by my own actions, an intolerable little imp, who, on this occasion, if never before, was "enough to provoke a saint."
At dinner Adrian, who when his father was not present, talked freely enough, related all sorts of things he had seen himself, as well as news and rumors heard at school and in the street, his eloquence being no little encouraged by his step-mother's eager questions. Intense anxiety had taken possession of the burgomaster's wife.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking