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Ah! poor woman! Never would he cause her such anguish and sorrow. Between his sword and Jacquemin's impertinent little person, were now this sad-eyed creature, and those poor little children, who played there, forgotten, half deserted, by their father, and who would grow up, Heaven knows how!
A bare and cheerless room; a pile of rags for a bed in the corner, another in the dark alcove, miscalled bedroom; under the window a broken candle and an iron-bound chest, upon which sat a sad-eyed woman with hard lines in her face, peeling potatoes in a pan; in the middle of the room a rusty stove, with a pile of wood, chopped on the floor alongside.
To a pale-browed, sad-eyed woman, who flits from velvet carpets and broidered flounces to the bedside of an invalid mother, whom her slender fingers and unslender and most godlike devotion can scarcely keep this side the pearly gates, I would heap a basket of summer-hued peaches smiling up from cool, green leaves into their straitened home, and, with eyes, perchance, tear-dimmed, she should read, "My good Maria: The peaches are to go to your lips, the bloom to your cheeks, and the gardener to your heart."
She seemed to see the two tiny creatures gradually very gradually growing plump and rosy in the sweet fresh English air, the look of unnatural old age that one sometimes sees in very delicate babies by degrees fading away as the thin little faces grew round and even dimpled; then came the recollection of the first toddling walk, when the two kept tumbling against each other, so that even the sad-eyed young widow could not help laughing; the first lisping words, which, alas, might not be the sweet baby names for father or mother for by that time poor Lavinia had faded out of life, with words of whispered love and thankfulness to the grandparents so willing to do their utmost.
"If he has dared !" she began, but paused abruptly with a smile of content. The rich man had given her exactly one hundred dollars. On Wednesday afternoon McNutt drove the sad-eyed sorrel mare over to the Wegg farm again. He had been racking his brain for a way to get more money out of the nabob, for the idea had become a veritable passion with him and now occupied all his thoughts.
They were very happy, for they were succeeding. They had met the great, cruel world, the world of Paris that romps and dances and laughs, and sees struggling and sad-eyed women and men go down to their death, and still laughs on; they had met the world in fair fight and they had won. The Little Mother had given all for Ary; on his genius and ability she had staked her fortune and her life.
He stayed, without dismounting, long enough to take a cup of coffee brought to him by General Shaw's daughter a "stirrup cup" his last. Then, giving his charger the spur, he rode away to death and distinction, tenderly waving a broken good-bye to the sad-eyed woman at the porch.
But this was nothing to eat. The light from the lamps shone over the partition between back room and front, and there in a spacious cage beside the wall was a monkey, a small, sad-eyed creature with an aged, wrinkled face all but human. He crouched in a corner and had been piling wisps of straw upon his reverend head.
As the last glimpse of the Firefly faded from the vision of the sad-eyed watchers, they turned slowly from their lookout of sorrow, and bent their steps homeward. "It's growing late, Miss Leah," said Emile, who stood near the young Jewess. "May I see you safely home?"
The picture would have struck terror to the sad-eyed æsthete, but an artist who liked to see colors burn and glow on the canvas would have been glad to paint her: a little frock of buttercup yellow calico, bare neck and arms, full of dimples, hair that put the yellow calico to shame by reason of its tinge of copper, skin of roses and milk that dared the microscope, red smiling lips, one stocking and ankle-tie kicked off and five pink toes calling for some silly woman to say "This little pig went to market" on them, a great bunch of nasturtiums in one warm hand and the other buried in Rags, who was bursting with the white cat's dinner, and in such a state of snoring bliss that his tail wagged occasionally, even in his dreams.
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