ट्रेजर आइलेंड

ट्रेजर आइलेंड Well, what did it matter to me? What reason had I to be jealous--I who The boys walked slowly and lingered much on the way home, munching apples all the time; and their well-stuffed blouses were noticeably less bulging when the boys finally parted at Johnny Blossom’s gate.,Oh, no, Johnny would tell nothing. Great sport this race was going to be for him, because of course he would ride the swiftest of all, being the most accustomed to riding. The boys devoted several days to practising for the great race which was to come off on Saturday.,As she went out of the gate the postman came in, and at the sight of another letter my heart slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much—they really don't plough deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out of the window and saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor's car go chugging hurriedly in the garage, and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, romper-clad sunbeam burst into the room.,It was a very fine, clear, sparkling May morning far down in the English Channel, and still the sea stretched desolate to its dim blue recesses: which, had all been right with Mr Lawrence, would have pleased him very much indeed, but he had something else to think of. The waters frolicked in little sliding runs; it was a chasing dance of waters with the billows pointing their white satin shoes under their brilliant skirts of liquid blue. Mr Lawrence walked the deck, and seemed to be keeping a bright look-out as he swept the horizon with the glass he had brought with him, and often his stern, haughty, and[Pg 315] handsome face was directed towards the men, who seemed to know that a vigilant eye had hove into view through the companion, and they clapped a fresh colour of activity into those motions of limbs which accompanied their labours.,"We should be all good subjects enough, if things were on a friendlier footing," says Mona, too absorbed in her own grievance to notice Mr. Rodney's suppressed but evident enjoyment of her conversation. "But when you despise us, you lead us to hate you."，"Besides, it may be an exaggeration," suggests Geoffrey "he may not be so bad as they say."，"I see it," returned Billy. "I guess I ain't scared of no snakes in these parts."，"The tramp then; Battersea?"And there I sat in my front room, being embraced in a perfume of everybody's lilacs and hawthorns and affectionate interest and moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose two photographs and letters I used to keep locked up in my desk. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had never come back because he couldn't have me, and that now the minute he landed in England he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added his colonial honours to his prostrate heart myself, and my own beat at the prospect. All the eight years faded away, and I was again back in the old garden down at Aunt Adeline's cottage saying good-bye, folded up in his arms. That's the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word "folded" made me remember that blue muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and wear it for him when he came back—and I couldn't forget that the blue belt was just twenty-three inches and mine is—no, I won't write it. I had got that dress out of the old trunk not ten minutes after I had read the letter and measured it.

"Shut it up tight again, Mona, and let me try to open it." And, Mona having closed the panel again and jumped down off the chair, Doatie takes her place, and, supported by Nicholas, opens and shuts the secret door again and again to her heart's content.,"Breakfast—one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a small cup of coffee, no sugar, no cream." And me with two Jersey cows full of the richest cream in Hillsboro, out in my meadow!,"Don't say it! don't!" cries Mona, in an agony, stopping his mouth with her hand. "Do not! Yes, I give in. I will go with you. I will marry you any time you like, the sooner the better,"—feverishly; "anything to save your life!",No one is forgotten by him; though once "he is dead and laid in grave" he is forgotten by most.,"Because I have nothing to say," murmurs the girl, in a frozen tone,—"nothing." Then passionately, "I will not be selfish. I will not do this thing.",Baffled, yet knowing he had expected it, he ran this way and that, peering round each corner, scanning the bare, high walls to see if by chance some window had been left unbarred. Not one less than a dozen feet from the ground! He ran back to the door, was almost tempted to shake it, yet knew that would be a foolish trick; some one might be within guarding May Nell; might at the first noise still more securely hide her,—they said there were fearfully deep and dark cellars under that house! She might come to—to some dreadful harm!,CHAPTER XXIX.,Since that time the deer has had no gall and the antelope no dew-claws.,The Wolf, I say here, for you'll find,"I know she's going to be a treat," she declared. "I hope she keeps whole for a while at least, until I get better acquainted.",Down the hill came a thin, rangy bay horse, astride which, an open book in his hand, sat Mr. G. G. Johnston. As he drew up in front of the gate he closed the book and turned his frowning eyes on the building. Utterly ignoring the awed, watching faces he shook his head grimly and, looking to neither right nor left, rode in through the open gate. Not until he had unbridled his horse and turned him loose to seek a breakfast as best he knew how, while he investigated the school's interior, did the boys and girls outside give way to their feelings.,Soon after leaving civilization the river broadened out into a shallow slow-moving stream. Bob lay back in the canoe and merely paddled sufficiently to steer it, letting the lazy current carry him slowly along. Close to the river bank everything was green and fresh looking, but this vegetation did not extend so far that Bob could not see where the green left off and the desert began..