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ludo link CHAPTER XVII. AT TWO BELLS. “Please,” answered the discomfited youth, “I aint never seen a ship of no kind.”,“I don’t know what’s the matter,—I’m drowned, I guess.” His teeth rattled, and the hand he put out to her was icy cold.,Maurice chuckled. "Why, Missis Spencer told her what great stuff it was to use in doin' up thimble-berries; sorta takes the flat taste off 'em. So Ma, she's goin' to try it.","Yes, but if he goes an' tells your Ma, what then?","And poor!" finished Etwald.，There is something deplorably lame about this exposition, when you take into consideration the fact that the new lovers have been, during the past two months, always absent from the rest of the family, as a rule.，"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr. Johnson——" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard, and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute you saw it. I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Dr. John's office and just to have looked at him and said one word—"Scarlet-runner!" Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Clinton from London.，"But what is Lady Lilias like? I did not notice her the other night," says Mona.The very worst page in this red book is the fifth. It says—

“I haven’t the least doubt of it.”,After which Etwald bowed his visitor politely to the door of the gloomy old house which he occupied in Deanminster, and Jen returned home, quite baffled as to what could have become of the devil-stick. All his inquiries proved futile, and he was unable even to conjecture how it had disappeared; yet knowing its fatal qualities, he was in constant dread lest it should reappear in connection with a tragedy. Maurice still held to his idea that Dido had taken the wand, but Jen's inquiries proved that the negress had not been out of the house the night in question.,Scarcely had the Aurora's skipper made this answer when there appeared at the side of the lieutenant a figure whose apparition was so sudden that, like Hamlet's ghost in[Pg 399] the theatre, he might be thought to have risen from below through an opening in the deck. He wore a cocked hat athwartships. His frock uniform coat seemed somewhat threadbare; amidst the folds of the left breast of his coat were four weather-tarnished and lustreless stars. The right sleeve was empty and was secured to the breast. One eye was protected by a green shade. He looked a little man alongside the lieutenant who himself was not above the average. Collingwood described him as small enough to be drawn through an alderman's thumb ring.,"Now, look here," he says, impressively: "I hope nobody is going to indulge in so much as a covert smile to-day." He glances severely at Nolly, who is already wreathed in smiles. "Because the Æsthetic won't have it. She wouldn't hear of it at any price. We must all be in tense! If you don't understand what that means, Mona, you had better learn at once. You are to be silent, rapt, lifted far above all the vulgar commonplaces of life. You may, if you like, go into a rapture over a colorless pebble, or shed tears of joy above a sickly lily; but avoid ordinary admiration.","Well, well, dearie, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocking-chair I always kept for her. "Alfred is not old enough to have proved himself entirely, and from what I hear——" she paused with the big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins to tease or match-make, and she does them both most of her time.,The man gave him an affectionate slap. “Go, then. You’re a right game kid, sure.”,When Patricia came home from the library at half-past five, she was surprised to find Elinor stretched on the couch, with a thick comfortable drawn up to her chin, and her face gray and haggard.,He knew why. She had told him. God, Destiny, Fate, had come between her and the man she loved. The man had lost more than life in playing the part of a man. He was blind! Behind him were only memories that could not be buried. Before him only darkness, bleakness, despair. And he had done an heroic thing in giving her up. Helpless, powerless to support her, what else was there for him to do? So, in his love for her, he had dug a grave and in it buried Hope and all that God in His wise ordinance had allowed him to live and feel. And they had kissed and parted, kneeling beside this grave, cold lips to cold lips, broken heart to broken heart. It was the kiss on the cross which each must carry.,"Isn't it horrid? Mr. Benton's come already, and I won't have a chance with my candy before criticism, as I hoped. I don't know what to do about it. I did so want to get it off my mind before I got my criticism, for I'm scared stiff about both of them.","What's your name again?" he said.,The other two men had dark and strong faces, which differed entirely from the Saxon simplicity and good looks of the major and Maurice. David was clean-shaven and almost as swart as Etwald, and his expression was that of a being with powerful passions, held in check by sheer force of will. He was broad and strongly built; and his smooth black hair, parted in the middle, was brushed carefully from a bold and rather protuberant forehead. The young barrister was somewhat of a dandy, but no one who once looked at his face thought of his dress affectations or dapper appearance. They saw intellect, pride and resolute will stamped upon the pale countenance. Men with such faces end usually in greatness; and it seemed unlikely that David Sarby, barrister and ambitious youth, would prove an exception to the rule.,No amount of urging or surprise questions sufficed to break his silence and the little party came to the lower camp before he had opened his lips..