"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my asking leave to write to her. No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of the house." "Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--" If necessary, one could brush all that up again. How different life was, when it came to be lived; how unlike the sagacious prognostications of doubting youth! There was a substratum underneath all that surge of enquiry and inquisitiveness, all that worry and distress; and that was life itself, known and valued, something that one clung to with increasing strength. The mind grew out of its speculative stage and settled down to a careful consideration of concrete existence. Prout dutifully returned the following evening, but Lawrence had nothing fresh to offer. He still clung to his new theory, but it was not sufficiently developed for practical use. And he didn't want to be laughed at, he said. “No,” admitted his pupil. “I think superstition is just believing something somebody else tells you until you are so busy watching out for something to go wrong that you aren’t ‘right on the job’ with your own work—or you are so busy waiting for some good thing to ‘happen’ that you don’t see Opportunity when it comes up because you’re not watching Opportunity—you’re watching Luck, or Omens.” A final test, with chocks under the wheels, the signal for the wheels to be cleared by the caretaker, a spurt of the gun for several seconds to get the craft rolling as the elevators were operated to lift the tail free, a run at increasing speed, picked up quickly because of the short runway—stick back, lifting elevators so the propeller blast drove the tail lower and the nose higher—and they left the ground. "How do you know this?" had two little girls who needed a mother's care. My husband Puna paused, and then repeated the last sentence. Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such festivals. Luck would have it that[Pg 58] for the last two years there had been no official fiddler—old Abel Pinch having been seduced by a semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother honourably as chief musician. Chapter 11 She had been a fool—she had brooded over a little trivial incident till it had assumed unwarranted proportions and frightened her. Nothing whatever had happened to her and Handshut—they had shared a joke,[Pg 288] that was all. She did not love him, she loved her husband, and she was a fool to have thought anything else. Love was not a drama or a tragedy, but a game and a lark, or at times a comfortable emotion towards one's lawful husband, who was the best and finest man in the world. He went straight to find Rose, for that mood was upon him. The due of loneliness which his shame demanded had been paid during the drive home from Rye, and now he quite simply and childishly wanted his wife. She was in the kitchen, stooping over some child's garment, the little frills of which she was pleating in her fingers. She lifted her head with a start as he came in, and he saw that her face was patched with tearstains. "No," said Margaret, as the command was delivered, "I shall not leave this court-yard, except by force, till I have seen my husband. Surely the favour that is granted to the wife of a common drawlatch, will not be denied to me!" HoME韩国nv播朴妮唛30分钟kw7142ENTER NUMBET 0019www.pjmd3v.com.cn www.fopwgm.net.cn x431.net.cn www.zjgxcth.com.cn www.badpet.com.cn liuhome.com.cn wxxygz.com.cn www.mooseez.com.cn xjybw.com.cn tjhaite.com.cn
