Hopes and Fears: or, scenes from the life of a spinsterYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
General
Hopes and Fears: or, scenes from the life of a spinster
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
England -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction; Single women -- Fiction
There was plenty of scrambling before it was over. A woman who had been
lying in wait for tourists at the gate, guided them to the bend of the
glen, where they were to climb up to pay their respects to the waterfall.
The ascent was not far from perpendicular, only rendered accessible by
the slope of fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one
projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was
to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock
overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a
window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's chair. Each girl perched
herself there, and was complimented on her strong head and active limbs,
and all their powers were needed in the long breathless pull up craggy
stepping-stones, then over steep slippery turf, ere they gained the
summit of the bank. Spent, though still gasping out, 'such fun!' they
threw themselves on their backs upon the thymy grass, and lay still for
several seconds ere they sat up to look back at the thickly-wooded
ravine, winding crevice-like in and out between the overlapping skirts of
the hills, whose rugged heads cut off the horizon. Then merrily sharing
the first instalment of luncheon with their barefooted guide, they turned
their faces onwards, where all their way seemed one bare gray moor,
rising far off into the outline of Luggela, a peak overhanging the
semblance of a crater.
Nothing afforded them much more mirth than a rude bridge, consisting of a
single row of square-headed unconnected posts, along the heads of which
Cilla three times hopped backwards and forwards for the mere drollery of
the thing, with vigour unabated by the long walk over the dreary moorland
fields with their stone walls.
By the side of the guide's cabin the car awaited them, and mile after
mile they drove on through treeless wastes, the few houses with their
thatch anchored down by stones, showing what winds must sweep along those
unsheltered tracts. The desolate solitude began to weary the volatile
pair into silence; ere the mountains rose closer to them, they crossed a
bridge over a stony stream begirt with meadows, and following its course
came into sight of their goal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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