TWO:This was true: the sermon on the duty of thankfulness had been short though joyous, and there was no Litany. Mrs Keeling had already congratulated herself on that, for she would have time to rest well before lunch and perhaps see Alice when she had rested. But when after a few more gracious remarks, she found herself in the hall, she did not immediately go to her boudoir to rest. Perhaps some little noise from the library, only half-consciously heard, caused her to pause, and then, Mrs Fysons unforgotten remark occurring to her, she went to that door and opened it. Her husband, whom she supposed to be at the cathedral, was standing in front of the fire.
FORE:The frown cleared, but the clear look did not return. It was over: it seemed she had satisfied herself.
FORE:He climbed quickly up the narrow chalky path, and at the top left it to tramp over the turf. Here he was on an eminence that commanded miles of open country, empty and yet brimful of this invasion of renewed life that combed through him like a swirl of sea-water through the thickets of subaqueous weed. His back was to the cup of hills round which Bracebridge clustered, and turning round he looked at it with a curious sense of detachment. There were the spires of the Cathedral, and hardly less prominent beside them the terra-cotta cupolas of the Stores. He wanted one as little as he wanted the other, and turned westwards, where the successive lines of downs stretched away like waves of a landless sea. Then he stopped again, for from a tussock of grass not fifty yards from him there shot up with throbbing throat and down-beating wings a solitary lark.{233} Somewhere in that tussock was the mate to whom it sang.
FORE:I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper, stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head (save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so. But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship. One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed. Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent, and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than Charlie Toliver?"I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows, and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up. Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
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TWO:"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--""Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their first cousins!"
THREE:"What are these?" he enquired.
THREE:[Pg 396]
THREE:"The first mate's boat headed me a little, and made for a big fellow on the starboard. I went for another, and we struck almost at the same instant. Within[Pg 63] three boat-lengths, I stood up, braced my feet firmly, poised my harpoon, and made ready to strike. The whale didn't know we were about, and was taking it very easy. The bow of the boat was about ten feet from his black skin when I sent the iron spinning and whizzing away, and buried it deep in his flesh. Didn't he give a jump! You can bet he did.
