Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
"I wonder at that," the warper said, "for I assure you he has been harder 'at it than ever thae last nights. What's more, he used to look doleful as he sat at his table, but I notice now that he's as sweer to leave off as he's keen to begin, and the face of him is a' eagerness too, and he reads ower to himself what he has wrote and wags his head at it as if he thought it grand."
The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with pirns in it that was climbing up and down the whirring mill. "She's dead," he answered. "She's dying," said the smith. A thread broke, and Aaron had to rise to mend it. "Stop the mill and listen," Auchterlonie begged him, but the warper returned to his seat and the mill again revolved.
"I say nothing about the disgrace you have brought on this house," the warper began without emotion, "for it has been a shamed house since afore you were born, and it's a small offence to skail on a clarty floor. But now I've done more for you than I promised Jean Myles to do, and you had your pick atween college and the herding, and the herding you've chosen twice.
On these occasions Aaron seldom troubled him, except by glances that, nevertheless, brought the kite back more quickly than if they had been words of warning. If Elspeth was present, the warper might sit moodily by the fire, but when the man and the boy were left together, one or other of them soon retired, as if this was the only way of preserving the peace.
"This is her dying words to you," continued the smith. "Did you speak?" "I didna, but I wish you would take your arm off the haik." "She's loath to die without seeing you. Do you hear, man? You shall listen to me, I tell you." "I am listening, smith," the warper replied, without rancour. "It's but right that you should come here to take your pleasure on a shamed man."
She now proposed to Aaron that this duty should devolve on Tommy, and for the service she would pay his fees at the Hanky School. "We maun all lend a hand to poor Jean's bairns," she said, with a gleam in her eye. "It would have been well for her, Aaron, if she had married you." "Is that all you have to say?" asked the warper, who had let her enter no farther than the hallan.
"She maun be weaned," replied the warper, with a show of temper; he was convinced that the sooner Elspeth learned to do without Tommy the better it would be for herself in the end, but in his way of regarding the boy there was also a touch of jealousy, pathetic rather than forbidding.
The heck, or apparatus for forming what is known as the weaver's lease, drawer's lease, or thread-by-thread lease, is shown clearly between the bobbin bank and the female warper in the foreground of the illustration.
The strange words in which the warper described his fall had always an uncomfortable effect on those who heard him use them, and Auchterlonie could only answer in distress, "Maybe that's what it is." "That's what it is. I have had twal lang years sitting on this box to think it out. I blame none but mysel'." "Then you'll have pity on Jean in her sair need," said the smith.
He patted Aaron affectionately; he seemed to be the older of the two. "Tak' your hand off my shuther," Aaron cried fiercely. Tommy removed his hand, but he continued to look yearningly at the warper. Another beautiful thought came to him. "What are you looking so holy about?" asked Aaron, with misgivings.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking