ONE:Alice had a faint smile for this.IV

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ONE:"Oh! tell it, please," said the two boys, in a breath.He looked directly at Arthur. "And dreaming," he added. "We dream, you know."

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ONE:

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ONE:"On account of the uncertainty of dead-reckoning, the captain doesn't rely on it except when the fog is so thick that he can't get an observation."Mr Keeling was accustomed to consider the hour or two after lunch on Sunday as the most enjoyable time in the week, for then he gave himself up to the full and uninterrupted pursuit of his hobby. None of his family ever came into his study without invitation, and since he never gave such invitation, he had no fear about being disturbed. Before now he had tried to establish with one or other of them the communication of his joy in his books: he had asked Alice into his sanctuary one Sunday, but when he had shown her an exquisitely tooled binding by Cameron, she had said, ��Oh, what a pretty cover!�� A pretty cover!... somehow Alice��s appreciation was more hopeless than if she had not admired it at all. Then, opening it, she had come across a slightly compromising picture of Bacchus and Ariadne, and had turned over in such a hurry she had crumpled the corner of the page. Her father hardly knew whether her maidenly confusion was not worse than the outrage on his adored volume. Stern moralist and Puritan though he was, this sort of prudery seemed to him an affectation that bordered on imbecility. On another he had asked Hugh to look at his books,{32} and Hugh had been much struck by the type of the capital letters in an edition of Omar Khayyam, wondering if it could be enlarged and used in some advertisement of the approaching summer sale at the stores. ��That��s the sort of type we want,�� he said. ��It hits you in the eye; that does. You can��t help reading what is written in it.�� Very likely that was quite true, for Hugh had an excellent perception in the matter of attractive type and arrangement in the advertising department, but his father had shut up the book with a snap, feeling that it was in the nature of a profanity to let the aroma of business drift into an atmosphere incense-laden with his books. His wife presented an even more hopeless case, for she was apt to tell her friends how fond her husband was of reading, and how many new editions he had ordered for his library. Clearly, if this temple was to retain its sense of consecration he must permit no more of these infidel intruders.

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THREE:The spectators gave themselves up wholly to the fun. It must have seemed to them that this extraordinary cricketer was also gifted with a sense of humour, however eccentric; and that his nonsensical action was intended by way of retaliation for the ironic cheers that had greeted his running at all. Nobody, except Arthur Withers, realised that the Clockwork man run thus far because for some reason he had been unable to stop himself. It may be remarked here that many of the Clockwork man's subsequent performances had this same accidental air of humour; and that even his most grotesque attitudes gave the observer an impression of some wild practical joke. He was so far human, in appearance and[Pg 35] manner, in spite of those peculiar internal arrangements, which will be dealt with later, that his actions produced an instantaneous appeal to the comic instinct; and in laughing at him people forgot to take him seriously.

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THREE:"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know your mother!"In the waste of waters round,

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THREE:��If you think it best, I will,�� she said. ��Whatever we do, don��t let us waste time here.��Mrs Keeling began to fear the worst, and forced a twin tear from her other eye.{51}

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THREE:��Very likely, my dear; you are wonderful at reading character. All the same the people who don��t give a thought to food are just those who do go hungry, so we may both of us be right. Is that a spot of rain or a fly? I felt something on the back of my glove.��Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood, moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot. The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had once pointed out to me at dawn.

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ONE:XXXIX CHARLOTTE SINGS��You know that, too,�� she said.

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THREE: "We have seen such lots of things to-day��lots and lots. I can't begin to tell you all in this letter, and there is so much that I don't know where to commence. Well, we went into some shops and looked at the things they had to sell, but didn't buy anything, as we thought it was too soon. One of the shops I liked very much was where they sold silk. It wasn't much like a silk-shop at home, where you sit on a stool in front of a counter and have the clerks spread the things out before you. In this shop the silk was in boxes out of sight, and they only showed you what you asked for. There was a platform in the middle of the shop, and the clerks squatted down on this platform, and unrolled their goods. Two women were there, buying some bright-colored stuff, for making a dress, I suppose, but I don't know. One man sat in the corner with a yardstick ready to measure off what was wanted, and another sat close by him looking on to see that everything was all right. Back of him there were a lot of boxes piled up with the goods in them; and whenever anything was wanted, he passed it out. You should have seen how solemn they all looked, and how one woman counted on her fingers to see how much it was all coming to, just as folks do at home. In a corner opposite the man with the yardstick there was a man who kept the accounts. He was squatted on the floor like the rest, and had his books all round him; and when a sale was made, he put it down in figures that I couldn't read in a week.The next moment the Clockwork man came into full view round the corner of the hedge. He was swaying slightly from side to side, in his usual fashion, and his eyes stared straight ahead of him. He did not appear to notice Arthur, and did not stop until the latter politely stepped aside in order to allow him to pass. Then the Clockwork man screwed his head slowly round and appeared to become faintly apprehensive of the presence of another being. After a preliminary ear-flapping, he opened his mouth very wide.

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ONE:It was fortunate, perhaps, that the Great Wymering people took their cricket rather seriously. Otherwise, they might have felt, as Doctor Allingham already felt, that there was something impossible about the Clockwork man's performance. He had walked out to the wicket amidst comparative indifference. His peculiar gait might easily have been attributed to sheer nervousness, and his appearance, without flannels, provoked only a slight degree of merriment. When he arrived at the wicket he paused and examined the stumps with great attention, as though wondering what they were for; and it was quite a little while before he arranged himself in the correct attitude before them. He remained standing still, holding the bat awkwardly in the air, and no amount of persuasion on the part of the umpire could induce him to take centre or place his bat to the ground in the recognised fashion. He offered no explanation for his eccentric behaviour, and the fact simply had to be accepted."A whale," Captain Spofford answered. "What he is doing here, I don't know. This isn't a whaling-ground."

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ONE:"Yes, jolly," said Arthur, "buck up.""Your request is very natural and proper," he answered; "but there are several things to consider. Niagara has been described many times, and those who have never seen it can easily know about it from books and other accounts. Consequently what you would write about the Falls would be a repetition of much that has been written before, and even your personal impressions and experiences would not be far different from those of others. I advise you not to attempt anything of the kind, and, at[Pg 36] all events, not to stop here a day for that purpose. Spend the evening in writing brief letters home, but do not undertake a description of the Falls. If you want to stay a day in order to see more, we will stay, but otherwise we will go on."

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THREE:To-day as he finished the perusal of these most satisfactory renderings of last month��s accounts, Keeling felt that he had arrived at a stage, at a plateau on the high upland of his financial prosperity. It stretched all round him sunny and spacious, and he had no doubt in his own mind as to whether it had not been worth while to devote thirty years of a busy life in order to attain it. The reward of his efforts, namely, the establishment of this large and remunerative business, and the enjoyment of an income of which a fifth part provided him with all that he could want in the way of material comfort and complete ease in living, seemed to him a perfectly satisfactory return for his industry. But as far as he could see, there was no further expansion possible in Bracebridge: he had attained the limits of commercial prosperity there, and if he was to devote his energies, now still in their zenith to a further increase of fortune, he knew that this expansion must take the form of establishing fresh branches of business in other towns. He did not for a moment doubt his ability to succeed elsewhere as he had succeeded here, for he had not in the course of his sober industrious life arrived at any abatement of the forces that drive an enterprise to success. But to-day the doubt assailed him as to whether it was worth while.