Queenie's whim, Volume 2 (of 3) : $b A novelCarey, Rosa Nouchette
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Queenie's whim, Volume 2 (of 3) : $b A novel
Carey, Rosa Nouchette
English fiction -- 19th century
"Yes, we shall meet!
And therefore let our searching be the stronger:
Dark days of life shall not divide us longer.
Nor doubt, nor danger, sweet!
"Therefore I bear
This winter-tide as bravely as I may,
Patiently waiting for the bright spring-day
That cometh with thee, dear."
"How beautiful!" sighed Langley. "I have always been so fond of
those lines. Your new song, 'My Queen.' embodies the same meaning,
Cathy." But Garth said nothing; he only sat for a long time shading
his eyes with his hand, and there was a certain moved look on his
face when he uncovered it as though he had been strongly affected.
But ever since that evening the restlessness had grown upon him, and
there had been a certain carping fastidiousness in his manner to his
sisters; and once or twice he had used Dora's name as a sort of
reproach. "If you were only as good a manager as Miss Cunningham,
Langley;" or "I wish you would read more, and choose your books as
sensibly as Miss Dora does, Cathy."
Langley took her rebuke meekly and in silence; but Cathy treated her
brother to a contemptuous shrug and a disdainful look.
"Dora; I am sick of Dora. Every one sees how that will end," she
said in a vexed voice, when they had come in from the garden, and she
had followed her friend up-stairs. "When that happens I suppose we
shall all be managed into our graves."
"Oh don't!" exclaimed Queenie, with a sudden accent of pain, and
becoming somewhat pale over her words. "She is not good enough for
him--for your brother."
"She is too good, you mean. I hate such faultless people. Dora is
never in the wrong; she is a pattern daughter, a pattern sister, a
model housekeeper, and unexceptionable in all parochial and social
duties; the work she gets through would astonish your weak mind."
"And then she is so clever."
"Clever! she is a perfect paragon of learning. She educated her
sisters until they went to Brussels. Then she is no mean musician;
she works beautifully too, and copies out all her father's sermons.
I am not sure she does not write them as well."
"Ah! now I can see you are joking."
"My dear, Dora is no joking matter, I can assure you; she and her
goodness together are very ponderous affairs. Do you think Garth
does not know all this? Why he and Dora have been friends ever since
they were children."
"I can see that he respects her most thoroughly."
"Not more than she respects him; she is always telling how excellent
he is, and what a model to other young men. When I am in a very good
humor with Garth, I sometimes repeat these little speeches, only I
have come lately to doubt the wisdom of adding fuel to the fire."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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