The King's Stratagem, and Other StoriesWeyman, Stanley John
General
The King's Stratagem, and Other Stories
Weyman, Stanley John
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the
tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So
busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait
for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you
look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too."
Munch, munch, munch!
"Who is, you impertinent, greedy little chit?"
"Oh, you know!" she answered. "Don't you wish you had your gray plush
here, Bab?"
I flung a look of calm disdain at her; but whether it was the berry
juice which stained our faces that took from its effect, or the free
mountain air which papa says saps the foundations of despotism, that
made her callous, at any rate she only laughed scornfully and got
up and went off down the stream with her rod, leaving me to finish
the cloud-berries, and stare lazily up at the snow-patches on the
hillside--which somehow put me in mind of the gray plush--and follow
or not, as I liked.
Clare has a wicked story of how I gave in to papa, and came to start
without anything but those rough clothes. She says he said--and Jack
Buchanan has told me that lawyers put no faith in anything that he
says she says, or she says he says, which proves how much truth there
is in this--that if Bab took none but her oldest clothes, and fished
all day, and had no one to run upon her errands--he meant Jack and the
others, I suppose--she might possibly grow an inch in Norway. Just as
if I wanted to grow an inch? An inch indeed! I am five feet one and a
half high, and papa, who puts me an inch shorter, is the worst
measurer in the world. As for Miss Clare, she would give all her
inches for my eyes. So there!
After Clare left it began to be dull and chilly. When I had pictured
to myself how nice it would be to dress for dinner again, and chosen
the frock I would wear upon the first evening, I grew tired of the
snow-patches, and started up stream, stumbling and falling into holes,
and clambering over rocks, and only careful to save my rod and my
face. It was no occasion for the gray plush, but I had made up my mind
to reach a pool which lay, I knew, a little above me; having filched a
yellow-bodied fly from Clare's hat, with a view to that particular
place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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