32Redl

32Redl I saw Hildegarde regard me with some surprise, as though she thought "Still, there was no necessity to insult him with such a message as you sent. Perhaps," with unpleasant meaning, "you do not understand that to say you are busy is rather more a rudeness than an excuse for one's non-appearance.",Oh, dear! How dreadful! At home no one knew a thing about anything, and here he had behaved like this and perhaps hurt Bob. To “break a horse’s wind” was dangerous he knew, because he had heard about one of the livery stable horses that had to be shot on account of being “broken-winded.” But Bob! It was impossible that it should go that way with Bob! Oh, it couldn’t!,"At once," replied Jen, and pointed to the door. Battersea bowed awkwardly to Lady Meg and his benefactor; then he went out of the room and left the major alone with his visitor.,"Well, you go along to the milkhouse an' lick the cream off a pan of milk. It'll settle that Injun turnip quick.","I won't, then. Sure you can live alone with yourself for one minute," returns she, in very fine Irish; and, with a parting smile, sweet as nectar and far more dangerous, she goes.，For feare she should of lightnesse be detected."，"Oh not for ever so long," returns she, with much and heartless unconcern. (His spirits sink to zero.) "Certainly not until Friday," she goes on, carelessly. (As this is Wednesday, his spirits once more rise into the seventh heaven.) "Or Saturday, or Sunday, or perhaps some day next week," she says, unkindly.，"Why, sakes alive!" cried his mother, "I never give Maurice a thought. O' course we'll have him, too. An' if there happens to be anybody else you'd like, you best say so now, Willium.""No! Not without the will."

"All right, Harry," he said airily, "if that's all you know about charms, I guess you haven't any that 'ud help us much. But let me tell you that rabbit-foot charm kin do wonders. It'll not only keep you from bein' bit by snakes but by sayin' certain words to it you kin bring a snake right in to your feet with it, an' you kin pick it up an' handle it without bein' bit, too.","Now he is thinking of that horrid lawsuit again," says Nolly, regretfully, who is a really good sort all round. "Let us go to him.","Now, that is nastier," says Geoffrey; "unsay it.","Sometimes I long again for a mad, wild gallop straight across country, where nobody can see me,—such as I used to have," goes on Mona, half regretfully.,"Out in the middle of the bay. There's two men in her; she must be shippin' water, 'cause she's low down. She's one of Swanson's boats. He ought'a know better than let a couple of greenies out on that sea.",Any demonstration on her part just now may make a scene, and scenes are ever abhorrent. And might she not yet further widen the breach between mother and son by an ill-timed show of affection for the latter?,Patricia looked after her with loving pride. "How pretty she is, and how clever," she thought tenderly. "And the best part of it is that she doesn't know what an adorable dear she is. I hope she gets an honorable mention, even if she can't hit the prize. She deserves a lot of good times, after all those lean years when she took such good care of us.",At this point, Geoffrey—who has been hunting all the morning—enters the room with Captain Rodney.,but I can,Indeed he had congratulated himself on behalf of his worthy old friend Sir William on having resolved to give his son this appointment, for it surely looked as though[Pg 104] with this gift of a berth, with this opportunity for honourably employing himself and so getting a little money and easing his father of the burden of his maintenance, the young fellow's reformation had begun, and naturally Captain Acton, who was an exceedingly kind-hearted man and a sound Christian in principle and behaviour, could not but be happy in the reflection that he might prove instrumental in rescuing a handsome young man, a gentleman, the son of an old friend, himself a Naval officer, a person whose character was enriched by many meritorious and some rare qualities, from the ruin physical and moral into which he was fast decaying through drink and an idleness which was a consequence of an aversion to his old calling, and the almost insuperable difficulty of obtaining anything to do whilst loitering in Old Harbour Town and passing most of his time at "The Swan" with Lieutenant Tupman.,And home was a good way off; first through the forest, then along the stone wall, and all across the Karine place, where everybody could see him. How disgusting! Where Eric was, or even which way he had gone in the woods, Johnny had no idea.,"Violet, play us something," says Geoffrey, who has quite entered into the spirit of the thing, and who doesn't mind his mothers "horrors" in the least, but remembers how sweet Mona used to look when going slowly and with that quaint solemn dignity of hers "through her steps.".