Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
It was a rainy afternoon in January, and a boisterous north-wester blew the Atlantic weather in our teeth as we mounted the rise over Vellingey churchtown. My head being bent down, I did not observe the figure of a woman coming up the village street, but looked up on hearing the sound of her clogs close beside the gig. It was Selina, tearful, carrying a bundle. "Whatever is the matter?"
The sand about Vellingey is always driving, more or less; and the gale so mixed it up with fine snow that we made our journeys to and from the house, so to speak, blindfold, and took our chance of the drifts. But the evening of the 11th promised better.
"Come," I said to myself, "five minutes' start in life and eighteen months in courtship is no such bad allowance for Obed. Perhaps he will allow me now to have my turn." I had this thought in my head as I drew near Vellingey in a light gig hired from the Truro post-master.
I asked, on pulling up. "They've turned me to door!" she moaned. "My dear, they've turned me to door!" She was tramping home to her cousins in St. Day parish. Not another night would she sleep at Vellingey to be trampled on.
"I've brought two pasties," said Honoria, "and a bottle of milk. We'll go over to George's country and catch trout. He is to meet us at Vellingey Bridge. We arranged it all yesterday, only I kept it for a surprise." Taffy could have leapt for joy. "Go in and speak to mother," he said; "she's in the kitchen."
This put a stop for the time to all chance of promotion; and a sharp attack of jaundice falling on top of my disappointments, I took the usual decrease of pay and the Board's promise to remember my services on a proper occasion, and hauled ashore to Vellingey for a holiday and a thorough refit of health.
"Well, she will have friends in Bergen, and business " "Has she written to her friends?" he interrupted. "Not to my knowledge: but she won't be staying here for ever, I suppose." "When she chooses to go, she can. Are you proposing to turn her out? If so, I'd have you to mind that Vellingey is my house, and I am master here."
But my father and mother dying just then, and the former having slipped a particular request into his will, Obed threw up the sea and settled down in Vellingey as a quiet yeoman farmer. Meanwhile, in 1779, I had entered the sea service of the Honourable East India Company; and with passable good fortune had risen in it pretty fast.
I own that as I sent the poor soul on her way, with a promise that the gig should carry back her boxes from Vellingey and a secret resolve that she should return to us within a week, I could not avoid a foolish pleasure in the thought that Margit deemed my coming of such importance. Then it occurred to me that her position now as a single woman alone at Vellingey lay open to scandal.
This was an unworthy thing to say, and he said it with a fury that surprised me. Obed and I had not quarrelled since we were boys. I put a stopper on my tongue, and went on smoking: and after a while he began to talk again in his natural way on ordinary matters. Margit stayed on; and to all appearance our life at Vellingey fell back into its old groove.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking