Springhaven: A Tale of the Great WarBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
History
Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Great Britain -- History -- Regency, 1800-1837 -- Fiction
“The useful part of it must be through you, miss, and not sent to her at
all, I think, or it would be very impertinent. The kind part is to give
her my good-bye, and say that I would die to help her. And the useful
part is for yourself. For God's sake, miss, do keep Miss Dolly out of
the way of Squire Carne! He hath a tongue equal to any woman, with the
mind of a man beneath it. He hath gotten me body and soul; because I
care not the skin of a dab what befalls me. But oh, miss, he never
must get Miss Dolly. He may be a very good man in some ways, and he is
wonderful free-minded; but any young lady as marries him had better have
leaped into the Culver Hole. Farewell, miss, now that I have told you.”
He was gone before Faith could even offer him her hand, but he took
off his hat and put one finger to his curls, as he looked back from
the clearing; and her eyes filled with tears, as she waved her hand and
answered, “Farewell, Daniel!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
CAULIFLOWERS
“They cocks and hens,” Mr. Swipes used to say in the earlier days of
his empire--“bless you, my lord, they cocks and hens knows a good bit of
gardening as well as I do. They calls one another, and they comes to see
it, and they puts their heads to one side and talks about it, and they
say to one another, 'Must be something good there, or he wouldn't have
made it so bootiful'; and then up go their combs, and they tear away
into it, like a passel of Scotchmen at a scratching-match. If your
lordship won't put a lock on the door, you will never taste a bit of
good vegetable.”
Admiral Darling was at length persuaded to allow Mr. Swipes the
privilege of locking himself in the kitchen-garden; and then, for
the purpose of getting at him, a bell was put in the gable of the
tool-house, with a long handle hanging outside the door in the courtyard
towards the kitchen. Thus he was able to rest from his labours, without
incurring unjust reproach; and gradually as he declined, with increasing
decision, to answer the bell when it rang, according to the highest laws
of nature it left off ringing altogether. So Mr. Swipes in the walled
kitchen-garden sought peace and ensued it.
One quiet November afternoon, when the disappearance of Dan Tugwell had
been talked out and done with, a sad mishap befell this gardener, during
the performance, or, to speak more correctly, the contemplation of his
work. A yawn of such length and breadth and height and profundity took
possession of him that the space it had so well occupied still retained
the tender memory. In plainer words, he had ricked his jaw, not from
general want of usage, but from the momentary excess.
“Sarves me right,” he muttered, “for carrying on so, without nothing
inside of 'un. Must go to doctor, quick step, and no mistake.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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