FORE:
FORE:A dignified native, with the fore part of his head closely shaven, was squatted on the floor in front of a little box about a foot high, which served as a table. Opposite was his wife, and at the moment our party looked in she was engaged in pouring something from a bottle into a small cup the size of a thimble. Directly under her hand was a bowl filled with freshly boiled rice, from which the steam was slowly rising; and at the side of the table was another and smaller one, holding some plates and chopsticks. A tiny cup and a bowl constituted the rest of the breakfast equipment. The master was waited upon by his wife, who was not supposed to attend to her own wants until his had been fully met. She sat with her back to the window, which was covered with paper in small squares pasted to the frame, and at her right was a screen, such as one[Pg 95] finds in nearly all Eastern countries. On her left was a chest of drawers with curious locks and handles, which doubtless contained the family wealth of linen.The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the wounded fellow's remounting!"
FORE:For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the expense--of all the rest."
THREE:Well, I do call this a nice family party! All of us at home, and Mamma too!
THREE:But she went up to her bed in a far better temper than she would otherwise have done, and quite abandoned any idea of lying awake to punish him for his previous brutality.Alice looked almost shocked at the notion of such unhallowed feet being thrust into these hardly less than sacred embroideries: it was as if her mother had suggested making a skirt out of the parrots and pomegranates that adorned the smart altar-cloth. But she divined that, in spite of her fathers inexplicable want of reverence for the Master (they had become Master and Helper, and sometimes she called him sir, much as Norah had called her father, but for antipodal reasons), there lurked behind his rather unseemly jokes a kindly intention towards herself. He might laugh at her, but somehow below that she felt (and she knew not how) that a part of him understood, and did not laugh. It was as if he knew what it meant to be in love, to thirst and to be unslaked, to be hungry and not to be fed.
