FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113  
114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>   >|  
want to go back?" said I, fearing he was growing restless. His face worked, and he said, "When I feel like a stone round Eustace's neck." "Why should you feel so? You are a lever to lift him." "Am I? The longer I live with you, the more true it seems to me that I had no business to come into a world with such people in it as you and Miss Tracy." Eustace came back, fidgeting to get a pen mended, an operation beyond him, but patiently performed by the stronger fingers. We said no more, but I had had a glimpse which made me hope that the pilgrim was beginning to feel the burthen on his back. Not that he had much time for thought. He was out all day, looking after the potteries, where orders were coming in fast, and workmen increasing, and likewise toiling in the fields at Ogden's farm, making measurements and experiments on the substrata and the waterfall, on which to base his plans for drainage according to the books Lord Erymanth had lent him. After the second day he came home half-laughing. Farmer Ogden had warned him off and refused to listen to any explanation, though he must have known whom he was expelling--yes, like a very village Hampden, he had thrust the unwelcome surveyor out at his gate with such a trembling, testy, rheumatic arm, that Harold had felt obliged to obey it. Eustace, angered at the treatment of his cousin, volunteered to come and "tell the ass, Ogden, to mind what he was about," and Harold added, "If you would come, Lucy, you might help to make his wife understand." I came, as I was desired, where I had never been before, for we had always rested in the belief that the Alfy Valley was a nasty, damp, unhealthy place, with "something always about," and had contented ourselves with sending broth to the cottages whenever we heard of any unusual amount of disease. If we had ever been there! We rode the two miles, as I do not think Dora and I would ever have floundered through the mud and torrents that ran down the lanes. It was just as if the farm had been built in the lower circle, and the cottages in Malebolge itself, where the poor little Alfy, so pure when it started from Kalydon Moor, brought down to them all the leakage of that farmyard. Oh! that yard, I never beheld, imagined, or made my way through the like, though there was a little causeway near the boundary wall, where it was possible to creep along on the stones, rousing up a sleeping pig or a dreamy donkey her
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113  
114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Eustace

 

Harold

 

cottages

 

understand

 

desired

 

rested

 

belief

 
unhealthy
 

contented

 

sending


Valley

 

cousin

 

volunteered

 

donkey

 

treatment

 

obliged

 
angered
 

rousing

 

stones

 

boundary


dreamy

 

sleeping

 

torrents

 

brought

 

started

 

circle

 
Malebolge
 

leakage

 

farmyard

 

disease


amount

 

unusual

 

causeway

 

Kalydon

 

floundered

 

imagined

 

beheld

 

mended

 
operation
 

patiently


people
 
fidgeting
 

performed

 
burthen
 

thought

 
beginning
 

pilgrim

 

stronger

 

fingers

 

glimpse