Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement — John Shaqi
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's MovementJohnston, Harry
General
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement
Johnston, Harry
Feminism -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying--I
should say--of necrosis of the jaw--Vavasour Williams is his
name or a part of his name. His father was at Cambridge with
my old man, and--isn't it rum?--he was a pupil of
_Praddy's_!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career,
thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene
painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in
the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then
as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in
the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and
got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him
about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much
owing to his jaw being tied up--usually he writes me
messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning
over a new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you
ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they
howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls
it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear
old mater--bless her, _always_--She so liked the Hindhead
country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him
know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's
people--twig?--F.G.
Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it
standing by the window.
She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age;
with a well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart,
tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a
handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young
man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume.
Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation
possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well
furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too
frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey
eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had
a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look
about the mouth--lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual
self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled
and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a
little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a
woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it
had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile
and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an
angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young
man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she
impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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