20Bet appl

20Bet appl CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor. "I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I am lonely. And worse than being lonely, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict of Mr. Carter and gone out with Aunt Adeline and let myself be fat and respectable; but I haven't got the character. You thought I went to town to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough clothes for two brides, and now I'm too scared to wear 'em, and I don't know what you'll think when you see my bankbook. Everybody is talking about me and that dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't live in a house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back to the cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married I ought to marry Mr. Wilson Graves because of his seven children, and then everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of, that they would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite five years yet. Mrs. Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward under you. I can't help judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's walking over my front steps every day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away and drown him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm——",At length they reached the house where the candle was shining, not without many alarms, for often they lost sight of it altogether, and always when they went down into the hollows. They knocked loudly at the door, and a good woman came to open it. She asked them what they wanted. Little Thumbling told her they were poor children who had lost their way in the forest, and who begged a night's lodgings for charity's sake. The woman, seeing they were all so pretty, began to weep, and said to them, "Alas! my poor children, to what a place have you come! Know you not that this is the house of an ogre who eats little children?" "Alas!" replied Little Thumbling, who trembled from head to foot, as indeed did all his brothers, "what shall we do? We shall certainly be all eaten up by the wolves to-night, if you do not give us shelter, and, in that case, we would rather be eaten by the ogre; perhaps he may have pity upon us, if you are kind enough to ask him." The ogre's wife, who thought that she might be able to hide them from her husband till the next morning, let the children come in, and led them where they could warm themselves by a good fire, for there was a whole sheep on the spit, roasting for the ogre's supper.,Whilst they waited for the arrival of the frigate's surgeon, Captain Acton asked Paul some questions which the hunchback answered as though when the examination was over the Captain would send him to be hanged forthwith at the yard-arm. In an agony of impatience the Admiral awaited the arrival of the medical man, who, considering that there was a space of blown and running sea for the boat to cross and re-cross, returned with Mr Fellowes in a space of time that was the expression of the habitual and disciplined promptitude of everything in which time finds a place, that is carried on aboard a British man-of-war.,Patricia, thrilled by the sweetness of the rippling, crooning song, and before the verse was half done, joined unconsciously in with the others, forgetting the need of words in the melody of the lilting song.,Whilst he walked Mr Lawrence came up from the cabin through the companion-hatch, and after standing a few moments looking about him, he stepped to the side of Mr Eagle. The contrast between the two men was remarkable. You could scarcely have believed that they belonged to the same nation. Mr Lawrence's tall, elegant, and dignified figure towered above the poor, unshapely conformation of Eagle; his handsome face wore an expression of haughtiness, distance, and reserve. Both Mr Eagle and the boatswain, named Thomas Pledge, who[Pg 237] acted as second mate, and the rest of the crew had already discovered that their captain perfectly well understood and remembered that he had been an officer in the Royal Navy, a sailor of His Majesty the King, that comparatively brief as his story was it was brilliant with heroic incident and adventure, and that instead of being greatly obliged to Captain Acton for this command, he considered that he was acting with a very uncommon degree of condescension in taking charge of a merchant vessel, unless indeed she was a prize to his man-o'-war.，"Why, Jack and Violet, of course. They've had it out. They are engaged!"，She laid down the little worn book just as the soft notes of the gong floated up from the lower hall.，The Admiral made his son welcome with unusual warmth.The Admiral might have been observed to be calculating by the movement of his lips. "It will be a run, then," said he, "of about forty days."

"I often wish I was at sea again!" exclaimed Sir William, as the two started afresh on their quarterdeck walk. "What a noble, open, hearty, soul-stirring life it is! What good fellows one meets, what brave ships, what splendid crews! It is my hourly regret that my son should be out of it. Though I am his father, I say that this young man had in him—nay, he has in him—all the makings of a fine, dashing, even a great officer. But that devil drink—not that the vice is immoderate with him: but he takes too much; and when the fiend is in him, all that is weak in his nature appears, and he falls: drink—but not so as to justify the word drunkard—drink and gaming—these undid him. He was a favourite with all he sailed with, and yet, through his own accursed folly, he is forced to quit the Navy under circumstances which would bring the moisture into my eyes if half a century of hard weather had not dried all the dampness out of them.","Impossible!" drawing back from him. "How could I be ready? and, besides, I have said I will not marry you until a year goes by. How can I break my word?","Couldn't," said Miss Jinny, briefly. "A girl without friends or money hasn't much show in a big town. I'm going to take charge of that girl, Patricia.",“And the water of the reservoir would cover how many acres?”,All this time Mr. Wopp had carried and brushed and shaken stove-pipe lengths until his face and bald head resembled a latticework trellis. Only one length remained to be operated on before proceeding to the upper storey, where the stove-pipe continued its tortuous way to the chimney, warming sundry rooms on its beneficent course.,"Some of his ideas are lovely. You would like his poetry, I think.",They were fully a mile away from the place of terror before sheer exhaustion forced them to abate their wild speed and tumble in a heap beneath a big elm tree, along the trail of the forest.,"I pretended to hear voices, and answered, of course, when Mr Lawrence was present," said Lucy. "I would bow to visionary persons and address them. One was the Duke of Clarence, whose hand I kissed while Mr Lawrence looked on.",CHAPTER V JERRY’S STORY,He turns, as though by an irrepressible impulse, to look keenly at her. His scrutiny endures only for an instant. Then he says, with admirable indifference,—,"How strange!" says Mona. "But how then did you manage?",In silence they made their way across the clearing to the road. "Say, Bill," said Maurice, as they paused to rest on the top rail of the fence, "do you 'spose we best tell our dads about seein' them men?".