Marjorie took her young cousins
botanizing in honour of Eugene, and crawfishing in memory of Mr.
Biggles; then she formed them into a Sunday school class, and instructed
them feelingly in the vanity of human wishes, and the fleeting nature of
all sublunary things. Even Timotheus could not be with Tryphosa as much
as he would have desired, and had to console himself with thoughts of
the morrow, and visions of two people in a ferny hollow singing hymns
out of one hymn-book. The glory seemed to have departed from Bridesdale,
the romance to have gone out of its existence on that humdrum Saturday.
The morning passed in drudgery, the dinner table in prosaic talk, and
the hot afternoon was a weariness of the flesh and spirit. Just about
tea time the mail waggon passed the gate; there was nobody in it for
Bridesdale. When the quiet tea was over, the veteran lit his pipe, and
he and Marjorie went to the post office to enquire for letters, and
invest some of Eugene's parting donations in candy. Half the mail bag
and more was for the Squire, the post-mistress said, and it made a large
bundle, so that she had to tie it up in a huge circus poster, which,
being a very religious woman, she had declined to tack up on the
post-office wall.
Pages:
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663