Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She had gotten into the back seat, and was leaning on the front seat in an informal sort of way. "Let's just try to get each other's point of view!" she suggested. "The idea is that Uncle Lee wanted all his girls to inherit alike " "That idea didn't seem to impress you much a week ago!" Alix said, glad to feel herself getting angry.
After another searching look in all directions, he started off through the tangle of weeds and burdocks to circle the house. He passed through what once must have been the tennis-court of Alix the First, now a weedy patch, and came to the back door.
The gate through the high fence was padlocked, and contained a sign with the curt warning: "No Trespass." On the opposite side of the wide strip of meadow-land, in which cattle grazed placidly, he could see the abandoned house where Alix Crown was born, a colourless, weather-beaten, two-storey frame building with faded green window shutters and a high-pitched roof blackened by rain and rot.
Time and again she started and appeared to be listening intently, and always there was a queer little expression in her eyes as of expectancy. Once or twice Mrs. Strong surprised a flash of anxiety, aye, even fear, in them. "You haven't read your letters yet, Alix," she said at last, seeking for some means to divert the girl's thoughts. "There is quite a pile of them there on the table."
Alix dashed upstairs for nails and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the comparative strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and hand. Anne flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty little head tipped to one side.
If Alix addressed her she fluttered the white lids as if it were an absolute agony to look up; to Peter she did not speak at all. But to Martin she sent an occasional answer, and when the conversation lagged, as it was apt to do in this company, she nervously filled it with random remarks infinitely less reassuring than silence. "How long do we stay here?"
"Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!" she added under her breath. "I don't hear you!" shouted Peter, who was suddenly rushing the engine. "You weren't intended to!" she shouted back. And until they were halfway home, and Alix laughed out in sudden shame and good-nature not another word was spoken.
Peter went and sat on the low bank by Alix again, and lifted one of her limp hands, and held it. Ah, if in God's mercy and goodness she might moan, he thought, that one slight ray of hope would flood all the world with light for him again! But she did not stir. "Gone?" said Cherry's heartrending voice, a mere whisper, beside him. He turned upon her lifeless eyes. "Gone," he echoed.
Cherry crushed the letter in her hand; she knew suddenly that she had always been jealous of Alix. Alix wrote gaily that she had asked Peter if he did not want to send Cherry a kiss, and he had said that his face was too dirty; he was moving geraniums.
Peter had a moment of pity for her, so young, so helpless, so tied. "Perhaps he won't want you until he is sure of staying!" he offered. "Oh, Mart always thinks the last thing is the permanent thing!" his wife answered, wearily. "He says he'll want me to join him about the middle of August." "Oh, help!" Alix said, disgustedly.
Word Of The Day