3Patti

3Patti Hildegarde bore the rough ride admirably--not a whimper did I hear, There was once a widow who had two daughters. The elder was so like her mother in temper and face, that to have seen the one was to have seen the other. They were both so disagreeable and proud, that it was impossible to live with them. The younger, who was the exact portrait of her father in her kindly and polite ways, was also as beautiful a girl as one could see. As we are naturally fond of those who resemble us, the mother doted on her elder daughter, while for the younger she had a most violent aversion, and made her take her meals in the kitchen and work hard all day. Among other things that she was obliged to do, this poor child was forced to go twice a day to fetch water from a place a mile or more from the house, and carry back a large jug filled to the brim. As she was standing one day by this spring, a poor woman came up to her, and asked the girl to give her some water to drink.,Luncheon was particularly gay, much to Judith's delight. Margaret Howes joined Patricia as she carried Judith off to the them, and Griffin with a kindred spirit had the next table. Doris Leighton, the pretty girl whom Patricia had so ardently admired on her first day and who had not been visible since then, appeared without her pale companion, and took the table on the other side of them, and when Margaret Howes, at Patricia's entreaty, introduced them, she brought her chair over to their table and made one of their merry party.,"I saw you in the looking glass!" she cried gleefully. "You needn't think you can surprise us, young lady!",Drink, every one;,"It looks like the production of a lunatic,—a very dangerous lunatic,—an habitue of Colney Hatch," muses Geoffrey, who is growing more and more puzzled with the paper's contents the oftener he reads it.，At the close of the act, in the far, high distance, the Goddess, Flora, appeared on a hill-crest. This was Edith herself, arrayed in a filmy gown of pale green, garlanded with snow-drops and buttercups. High, far, and faint came her song of the dawn of Spring. But the gnomes and the elves, Storm, Wind, Frost, and Rain, roared and howled; and Flora, affrighted, fled from view.，"Ye—es; he will do," says Mona, after a second's careful thought, and even now reluctantly.，She was dressed, of course, in the costume in which she had been kidnapped, and like the sailors she looked very much the worse for wear and tear. Her jockey-shaped hat, so modish and even rakish when purchased, had fallen into a confusion of headgear, a something that might have wanted a name had it been found on the highway. Her hair looked wild in the inartistic dressing it suffered from. Her rich and characteristic bloom had faded, and what lingered was but[Pg 360] as a delicate faint flush of expiring sunset. But even as she stood, not the most cynical and aspish of her own sex would have challenged her beauty, the charms of her figure, the melting sweetness of her eyes on whose dark-brown irids the white lids, rich in eyelash, reposed. Those eyes were wet now, and tears were upon her cheeks.It was Friday morning, and the three girls were the last in the dining-room. The sun was slanting brightly in over the table and fell across the pile of letters with a prophetic shimmer, making the little red and green patches of the stamps flame into gay prominence.

"Gently now," Hinter cautioned, and they threw themselves at her feet, massive heads on outstretched paws, deep-set eyes raised to her face. She bent and placed a hand on the head of each.,"Well, the Yankee's discipline is taut, though not so taut as ours by the length of a log-line to a lead-line. You therefore understand the necessity of obeying orders?",The journey lasted seven years, during which time the poor Queen went through unspeakable pains and suffering, and if it had not been for the beautiful Moufette, who was a great comfort to her, she would have died a hundred times over. This wonderful little creature could not open her mouth or say a word, without filling her mother with delight; indeed, everybody, with the exception of the Fairy Lioness, was enchanted with her; at last, when the Queen had lived six years in this horrible place, the fairy said that, provided everything she killed was given to her, she might go hunting with her.,Geoffrey utters an exclamation, and Mona, after one swift comprehensive glance at the rifled cupboard, bursts into tears. The bitter disappointment is more than she can bear.,"I remember his coming. Go on, please.","But this is morbid,—a foolish pride," protests she, passionately, while all the others are struck dumb at this suggestion from Nicholas. Is his brain failing? Is his intellect growing weak, that he should propose such a thing? Even Doatie, who as a rule supports Nicholas through evil report and good, sits silent and aghast at his proposition.,"Don't I always study like this?" replied Judith without looking up. "Go ahead as long as you like—only don't talk. I want to study.",Yet almost before the prayer was breathed the child with incredible swiftness scudded across the bending board and stood safe by his side!,Robert, to whom the keys had been entrusted, was severely interrogated by the marquis. He persisted in a simple and uniform declaration of his innocence; but as the marquis believed it impossible that Julia could have escaped without his knowledge, he was ordered into imprisonment till he should confess the fact.,They were all rather serious for a silent moment, and then Patricia spoke. Her clear voice was rather low and timid, but her eyes were shining.,"After she told me to put the tray on the deck, and looked at it and asked about the knife, she stares at me just as I was about to go, and then, your honour, her face changes as if she'd pulled off a mask. She smiled with so cunning a look, such a trembling of the eyelids, that I reckoned she'd got something hidden and was going to stab me with it, and she lifts her shoulders all the while, a-looking at me with a cunning smile and trembling eyes, till I supposed she was a-imitating of my figure; and then she whispers so soft[Pg 313] that I could just hear what she said, whilst she beckons to me, smiling: 'If I show it, swear you'll keep it a secret.' 'I don't know what you mean, ma'am,' I says. 'Here,' she says, with her cunning smile, and still a-beckoning. 'But if you don't keep the secret I'll kill you as sartin as that you was born in a forest.'","Through the window. I was passing, and found it open." There is some note in his voice that might well be termed mocking..