Our one remaining week rolled its hours swiftly along. Every morning the
Sabre-boy began the day by ringing his great bell, beginning on the
ground-floor, then up the stairs, a salvo in our little entry-way, a
flurry around the corner, and a long excursion down the gallery, with a
salute to all outdoors on the rear balcony; then counter-march, ringing
all the time, back to the second-story stairs, up the stairway, and a
tremendous clanging at the three blue doors; then, face about, and over
the whole route again down to the ground-floor, where a final flourish
in jig time always brought the sleepy idea that he was dancing a
double-shuffle of triumph in conclusion.
“I don’t know which is the worst,” said Sara, “the dogs that
bark all night, the roosters that crow all day, the Sabre and
his morning clanging, or the cathedral chimes, those venerable and
much-written-about relics that ring in the hours like a fire-alarm of
cow-bells gone mad.”
“Do you know that to-morrow will be Easter?” I said, when we had but two
days left. “We must ask Mr. Hoffman to take us out this evening to hear
the Minorcans sing; to-morrow we will go to the Episcopal church, and
then, on Monday, ho! for the bonny North.”
“Very bonny!” said Sara.
“Do you agree to the programme, mademoiselle?”
“All save the church-going.”
“We are not Episcopalians, I know, but on Easter-Sunday--”
“Oh, it isn’t that, Martha. I don’t want to go to church at all. I am
not in the mood.”
“But, Sara, my dear--”
“Yes, and Sara, my dear! Religion is for two classes--the happy and the
resigned. I belong to neither. I am lost out of the first, and I haven’t
yet found the second. I took this journey to please you, Martha. I don’t
blame you; it was all chance; but--You think you know all my life. You
know nothing about it. Martha, I was once engaged to John Hoffman.”
“What! engaged?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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