United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Tussie isn't well," she said the moment Priscilla appeared, fixing her eyes on her face but looking as though she hardly saw her, as though she saw past her, through her, to something beyond, while she said a lesson learned by rote. "Isn't he? Oh I'm sorry," said Priscilla. "He caught cold last Sunday at your treat. He oughtn't to have run those races with the boys. He can't stand much."
Why, I believe the stuff has filled my veins with milk instead of good honest blood." "Dearest, I'll have it thrown out of the nearest window," said Lady Shuttleworth, smiling bravely in her poor Tussie's small cross face. "But what shall I give you instead? You know you won't eat meat." "Give me lentils," cried Tussie. "They're cheap." "Cheap?"
"Upon my word he seems to be very cool," she said; and the servant, his gaze fixed on a respectful point just above his mistress's head, reflected on the extreme inapplicability of the adjective to anything so warm as the gentleman at the door. "Shall I see him for you, mother?" volunteered Tussie briskly. "You?" said his mother surprised. "I'm rather a dab at German, you know.
"I believe," said Tussie, "that without it I'd have drowned myself long ago. And as for the poets " He stopped. No one knew what poetry had been to him in his sickly existence the one supreme interest, the one thing he really cared to live for. Fritzing now loved him with all his heart.
Let her go." "Listen to her!" cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, "Let you go? Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not able to speak "
"A most unusually promising young man," he repeated; "and, madam, I can tell you it is not my habit to say a thing I do not mean." "'The last reflection of God's daily grace'" chirped Tussie, looking on much amused. "No, that I'm quite certain you don't," said Lady Shuttleworth with conviction. "Don't say too many nice things about me," advised Tussie. "My mother will swallow positively anything."
She bent her head down to his and laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly, apologetically. "Ethel Ethel," choked Tussie, "will you marry me?" "Dear Tussie," she whispered in a shaky whisper, "I promise to answer you when you are well. Not yet. Not now. Get quite well, and then if you still want an answer I promise to give you one. Now let me go."
And he hurried into the hall to fetch his cap, humming O dear unknown One with the stern sweet face, which was the first line of his sonnet in praise of Priscilla, to a cheerful little tune of his own. "Tussie, it's so damp," cried his anxious mother after him "you're not really going out in this nasty Scotch mist? Stay in, and I'll leave you to settle anything you like."
In the kitchen sat the Shuttleworth kitchenmaid, a most accomplished young person, listening to the groans and wondering what next. Tussie had sent her, with fearful threats of what sort of character she would get if she refused to go.
The very blower seemed frightened, and blew in gasps; and the startled Tussie, comparing the sounds to the clamourings of a fiend in pain, could not possibly guess they were merely the musical expression of the state of a just woman's soul. Mrs. Morrison's anger was perfectly proper.
Word Of The Day