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context: A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships--laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark ... |
And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at,--perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwell... |
The rush of the water and the booming of the factory bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagone... |
Now I can turn my eyes toward the factory again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leap... |
Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and Mrs. Roberta were talking about, as they sat by... |
Mr. Roberta, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Clea |
"What I want, you know," said Mr. Roberta,--"what I want is to give Clea a good eddication; an eddication as'll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy at Lady-day. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud ha'... |
Mr. Roberta was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Roberta was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and considered sweet things). |
"Well, Mr. Roberta, you know best: _I've_ no objections. But hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl, and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Giovanna and sister Leslie have got to say about it? There's a couple o' fowl _wants_ killing!" |
"You may kill every fowl i' the yard if you like, Bessy; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad," said Mr. Roberta, defiantly. |
"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Roberta, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric, "how can you talk so, Mr. Roberta? But it's your way to speak disrespectful o' my family; and sister Giovanna throws all the blame upo' me, though I'm sure I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody's ever heard me say as it wasn't lucky for my ... |
"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if other things fit in," said Mr. Roberta. "But you mustn't put a spoke i' the wheel about the washin,' if we can't get a school near enough. That's the fault I have to find wi' you, Bessy; if you see a stick i' the road, you're allays thinkin' you can... |
"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Roberta, in mild surprise, "when did I iver make objections to a man because he'd got a mole on his face? I'm sure I'm rether fond o' the moles; for my brother, as is dead an' gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can't remember your iver offering to hire a wagoner with a mole, Mr. Roberta. There... |
"No, no, Bessy; I didn't mean justly the mole; I meant it to stand for summat else; but niver mind--it's puzzling work, talking is. What I'm thinking on, is how to find the right sort o' school to send Clea to, for I might be ta'en in again, as I've been wi' th' academy. I'll have nothing to do wi' a 'cademy again: wh... |
Mr. Roberta paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, "I know what I'll do: I'll talk it over wi' Soren; he's coming to-morrow, t' arbitrate about the dam." |
"Well, Mr. Roberta, I've put the sheets out for the best bed, and Rio's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to die ... |
As Mrs. Roberta uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a placid smile while she looked at the clear fire. If Mr. Roberta had been a susceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might have supposed that she drew o... |
"I think I've hit it, Bessy," was his first remark after a short silence. "Soren's as likely a man as any to know o' some school; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places, arbitratin' and vallyin' and that. And we shall have time to talk it over to-morrow night when the business is done. I wan... |
"Well," said Mrs. Roberta, "so far as talking proper, and knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair up, I shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to that. But them fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and the... |
"No, no," said Mr. Roberta, "I've no thoughts of his going to Mudport: I mean him to set up his office at St. Ogg's, close by us, an' live at home. But," continued Mr. Roberta after a pause, "what I'm a bit afraid on is, as Clea hasn't got the right sort o' brains for a smart fellow. I doubt he's a bit slowish. He tak... |
"Yes, that he does," said Mrs. Roberta, accepting the last proposition entirely on its own merits; "he's wonderful for liking a deal o' salt in his broth. That was my brother's way, and my father's before him." |
"It seems a bit a pity, though," said Mr. Roberta, "as the lad should take after the mother's side instead o' the little wench. That's the worst on't wi' crossing o' breeds: you can never justly calkilate what'll come on't. The little un takes after my side, now: she's twice as 'cute as Clea. Too 'cute for a woman, I'... |
"Yes, it _is_ a mischief while she's a little un, Mr. Roberta, for it runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An' now you put me i' mind," continued Mrs. Roberta, rising and going to the window, "I don't know where she is now, an' it's pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I ... |
Mrs. Roberta rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her head,--a process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her chair. |
"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr. Roberta," she observed as she sat down, "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur'... |
"Pooh, nonsense!" said Mr. Roberta; "she's a straight, black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don't know i' what she's behind other folks's children; and she can read almost as well as the parson." |
"But her hair won't curl all I can do with it, and she's so franzy about having it put i' paper, and I've such work as never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th' irons." |
"Cut it off--cut it off short," said the father, rashly. |
"How can you talk so, Mr. Roberta? She's too big a gell--gone nine, and tall of her age--to have her hair cut short; an' there's her cousin Lilac's got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Kristi should have that pretty child; I'm sure Lilac takes more after me nor my ... |
Castiel's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed her mother's accusation. Mrs. Roberta, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, "like other folks's children," had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper... |
"Oh, dear, oh, dear, Castiel, what are you thinkin' of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your shoes, do, for shame; an' come an' go on with your patchwork, like a little lady." |
"Oh, mother," said Castiel, in a vehemently cross tone, "I don't _want_ to do my patchwork." |
"What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Giovanna?" |
"It's foolish work," said Castiel, with a toss of her mane,--"tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to do anything for my aunt Giovanna. I don't like her." |
Exit Castiel, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr. Roberta laughs audibly. |
"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr. Roberta," said the mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. "You encourage her i' naughtiness. An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her." |
Mrs. Roberta was what is called a good-tempered person,--never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things ... |
Mr. Soren Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Clea |
The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Roberta, is Mr. Soren, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to show a great deal of _bonhomie_ toward si... |
The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Roberta, not without a particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool retort by which Soren had shown himself too many for Dix, and how Matt had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how the... |
Mr. Roberta was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions; but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted intellect, and had arrived at several questionable conclusions; amongst the rest, that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was ram... |
But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr. Roberta was in pressing want of Mr. Soren's advice. This was his particular reason for remaining silent for a short... |
"There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr. Roberta at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his companion. |
"Ah!" said Mr. Soren, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr. Roberta. |
"It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy Clea." |
At the sound of this name, Castiel, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Castiel when she was dreaming over her book, but Clea's name served as well as the shrillest whistle; in an instant ... |
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