"Madam," I said, "one deception opens the way for a whole flock,"

and I spoke with something of a double meaning, but she only cried

out, with apparently no understanding of it, that things had come to

a cruel pass, and back to the house she went; and I presently

followed her to get my gun, having a mind to shoot a few wild fowl,

since my pupil was at her wheel. And there the two sat, keeping up

that gentle drone of industry which I have come to think of as a

note of womanhood, like the hum of a bee or the purr of a cat or the

call of a bird. They sat erect, the delicate napes of their necks

showing above their muslin kerchiefs under their high twists of

hair, for even Mary had her golden curls caught up that morning on

account of the flax-lint, and from their fair, attentive faces

nobody would have gathered what stress of mind both were in. Of a

surety there must be a quieting and calming power in some of the

feminine industries which be a boon to the soul.

But, as I passed through the hall, up looked Mary, and her beautiful

face flashed out of peace into a sunlight of love and enthusiasm.

"Oh," she cried out, "oh, was there ever anyone like my sweetheart

Catherine? To think what she hath done for me, to think, to think!

And she, dear heart, loving the king! But better she loves her

little sister, and will stand by her in her disloyalty, for the love

of her. Was there ever any one like her, Master Wingfield?"

And I laughed, though maybe with some slight bitterness, for I was

but human, and that outburst of loving gratitude toward another, and

another whom I held in slight esteem, when it was I who had given

the child my little all, and presently, when my term was expired,

would have to return to England without a farthing betwixt me and

starvation, and maybe working my way before the mast to get there at

all, had a sting in it. 'Twas a strange thing that anything so noble

and partaking of the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman

should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused

thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as

inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the

thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the

more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in

this world, and ever the desire for a better, and that longing which

will not be appeased groweth in my soul, until methinks the very

keenness of the appetite must prove the food.




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