Bildungsromans; Blind -- Fiction; Parent and child -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Then she finds that the house is ugly, the yellow and mauve answer back
so coldly to the sun. And it was so small and tumble-down. The life was
so full, so bitter. If she could change it. There would be the long
drive through the great big park with the high wall round it and the
great big entrance gates, made of hundreds of crowns in polished
copper. After that you would come suddenly through a wood of tall
poplars upon a house that was the most beautiful in the world, made of
a lot of grey stone. Standing on the steps to greet her as she steps
out of her luxurious car would be the many footmen dressed in scarlet,
and all young and good-looking. Inside would be the huge staircase, and
the great big rooms furnished richly. On a sofa, smoking a cigar, would
be the husband, so beautiful. He would have lovely red lips and great
big black eyes. Like a sort of fairy story. It would be just like that.
But there was the other dream. A small house with a cross somewhere to
show it was a vicarage, and a young clergyman, her husband, and lots
and lots of children. She would be in the middle, so happy, her big
dark eyes shining like stars, and they would be stretching out chubby
fingers to her. But what was the good of dreaming?--dreaming never did
anyone any good.
It was nicer to live as you were, and George might be somewhere near.
There were the eggs to do.
She wriggles round and looks out, through the gap with the little gate,
over the river sunk in her banks and invisible, to the trees on the
hills that were soaked in blue, with sunshades of bright sun green on
top. A pigeon moves, winking grey, through them; no sound breaks the
quiet. It is a sleepy blue, and how the ground was bubbling, air
bubbles rising that you could see. She would have to go and boil the
eggs, and bubbles would come then. The oil lamp would make such a heavy
smell. She liked them raw, but Father would have them boiled. It had to
be done. Father was a great baby, and he had to be fed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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