zeturf commentary

zeturf commentary CHAPTER I. "Are you sure?"—with cold severity. "It is only two days ago since you told me you loved nothing better than an easy-chair.","Oh no, sir, you can do without a daisy from me," she answered, though her cheeks were warm with one of those sudden blushes which seemed to glow as though to prove that her lovely bloom was entirely due to nature and not to art, as the suspicious eye might fancy or the cynical eye desire.,"I don't see why he shouldn't, sir; the wound is not mortal. But he will require to be very carefully nursed," answered the surgeon, with the coolness and manner of indifference which are a characteristic of the official medical man who is unburdened with stimulating considerations of practice and fees.,For a moment Bob thought he had won, for there was a look in his former chum’s eyes as if he was struggling to express something he could not say aloud. But Jerry’s words belied the message of his eyes.,"I don't want to go swimmin'" wailed Maurice, "but I do want'a walk a bit out through the woods, Ma."，"There," said the swans; "you are now close to the Sun's lodge. Follow that trail, and soon you will see it."，"Have you news of her?" cried Miss Acton.，“I’ve never worked,” May Nell said reminiscently; “but there’s one hard thing I’ve done—I’ve kept very still when mama has her headaches.”"There now. Nobody 'ud believe it. An' yet I saw it."

But the stranger remained so long invisible from the deck whilst she could be easily distinguished from the height of the fore-topgallant and then from the fore-topsail yard,[Pg 412] and then from midway the altitude of the fore-shrouds, that it was not before the afternoon had passed into a golden brightness of westering sunlight that the ship right ahead revealed her canvas to the quarterdeck of the Aurora.,Some little distance from the major's abode stood a long, low rambling house on a slight rise. Surrounded by deep verandas, it was placed in the middle of emerald green lawns, smoothly clipped; and these, lower down, were girdled by a belt of ash and sycamores and poplars, which shut out the house from the high road.,As he approached, an old woman, bent with age and crippled, came from the lodge door and looked at him.,They resumed their walk. When they had reached the bridge they found old Mr Greyquill, leaning over the rail, and gazing with intentness, with a sort of lifting leer which could not be defined as a smile, though it was like the shadow of one, in the direction of Old Harbour. This person was not used to address either of the gentlemen on meeting them in the public streets. They were accustomed to nod in silence. But this morning [Pg 175]as the Admiral and the Captain passed him, the Admiral so close as to brush his coat-tail, the old scrivener turned with a rapid motion and exclaimed, still preserving his singular leer: "I beg pardon, gentlemen, but as I fail to see the Minorca amongst the ships, may I enquire if she has sailed?",When, at last, the boys had all been attended to, Mr. Johnston paused for rest. "I shall now begin on the girls," he said, "but before administering punishment I am going to give the guilty boy, or girl, one more chance to confess. Will the one who put the sulphur in the stove stand up?",The mansion, with its flat roof and wide verandas, had a tropical look, and indeed it had been built by a retired Indian nabob at the beginning of this century. When he died the house had been sold, and now it was occupied by Mrs. Dallas, who leased it because of its suggestion of tropical habitation. She came from the West Indies, and had lived in "The Wigwam," as the house was called, for over ten years.,"An' Teacher Stanhope, he deeded the swamp to me," said Billy dazedly. He got up from the log and squared his shoulders. "Well," he spoke, "that was mighty good of him, but I ain't wantin' that swamp.","Have a good time last night?" he asked.,Long, long ago, Red Robe and Talking Rock were young men in the Blackfeet camp. In their childhood days and early youth their life had been hard. Talking Rock was an orphan without a single relation and Red Robe had only his old grandmother.,"I quite forgot it," she says, coloring with sudden fear, and then slowly, cautiously, she draws up to view the hated pistol he had left in the library the night before. She holds it out to him at arm's length, as though it is some noisome reptile, as doubtless indeed she considers it. "Take it," she says; "take it quickly. I brought it to you, meaning to return it. Good gracious! fancy my forgetting it! Why, it might have gone off and killed me, and I should have been none the wiser.",Lucy had watched the sailors of the barque gather in the confusion of studding-sails until the vessel looked as trim and fit aloft as need be; she had also watched the passage of the Phœbe's boat to the frigate, and its return to the barque with one man more, whose position on board she could not imagine, neither that nor the reason for his being fetched. The man-of-war lay near, rolling languidly, lifting her copper sheathing on fire with wet sunshine, pointing her guns at the sea as the bright buttons of her trucks described arcs upon the blue sky like the flight of meteors in the velvet deeps of night. But now at half-past four the girl seemed to witness a commotion on board the barque. A man went aloft to the main-yard arm, and another to the fore-yard arm, and some one standing upon the quarterdeck of the Minorca, in a voice by which she guessed him to be Mr Fellowes, hailed the schooner, and requested Captain Weaver to send whips aloft to hoist a sick man in a litter aboard.,"One might do worse than put faith in Mona," says, Geoffrey, quickly. "She is worthy of all trust. And she is quite charming,—quite. And the very prettiest girl I ever saw. You know you adore beauty, mother,"—insinuatingly,—"and she is sure to create a furor when presented.".