Three Courses and a Dessert: Comprising Three Sets of Tales, West Country, Irish, and Legal; and a MelangeClarke, William
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Three Courses and a Dessert: Comprising Three Sets of Tales, West Country, Irish, and Legal; and a Melange
Clarke, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Legal stories, English; West Country (England) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
I'm a bad hand at describing a beauty, but I'll try my best to give you
an idea how Norah Cavanagh looked when she was twenty. The nose is a
part of a woman's face that few people spake of in reckoning over her
charms; but, in my mind, it's worthy of notice, as well as the eyes.
Norah's nose was neither long nor short; too thick, nor otherwise;
turned up nor down;--but just delicate, fine, and growing straight from
her brow, in a way that it was beautiful to behould, but next akin to
impossible to describe. There wasn't much colour in her cheek, but the
lips made up for it: you may talk of cherries for a twelvemonth,--but
there never was cherries so temptingly red as the lips of young Norah;
and when she opened them, you saw two rows of teeth,--not so white as
the inside of an oysther, but of a colour you loved better; for they
was just exactly as a healthy and handsome young woman's should be;--and
they sparkled and seemed to laugh, every one of them, when their owner
did. Her eyes wasn't blue nor black; no, nor grey; nor hazel; but a
mixture of all, and not a bit the less beautiful. When you gazed into
them, they was like a picture; for there seemed to be a little view of
some place in each of them. But this wasn't noticed at a distance; and
it's few knew of it, but those who had dandled Norah when a child; for
she kept the boys off when she grew up, and, if anything, was thought to
value herself a little too much, considering she'd nothing. Norah's
hair wasn't so white as to make her look silly:--it had a dash of light
auburn upon the ends of the curls; and when the sun shone upon them,
they had a gloss that dazzled the eyes of all the boys about. Was I
but younger that time, I think I'd have been in love with little Norah
myself;--and won her, perhaps, away from them all:--who knows?--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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