Mrs. Gibson, it is true, was ready to go over the ground as many times as any one liked; but her words were always like ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts. Anybody might have used them, and, with a change of proper names, they might have served to describe any ball. She repeatedly used the same language in speaking about it, till Molly knew the sentences and their sequence even to irritation.
I consider the thought as everything,′ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘Thought is spiritual, while action is merely material.’ This fine sentence took the speaker herself by surprise; and in such conversation as was then going on, it is not necessary to accurately define the meaning of everything that is said.
Partners whose names were in the ‘Red Book’ would not have produced half the amount of fatigue, according to Mrs. Gibson’s judgment apparently, and if Cynthia had been quite well, very probably she would have hit the blot in her mother’s speech with one of her touches of sarcasm.
Mrs. Gibson had once or twice reproved them for the merry noise they had been making, which hindered her in the business of counting the stitches in her pattern; and she had set herself a certain quantity to do that morning before going out, and was of that nature which attaches infinite importance to fulfilling small resolutions, made about indifferent trifles without any reason whatever.
He swept off his business right and left that day. It seemed as though his deep mortification of yesterday, and the stunned purposeless course of the hours afterwards, had cleared away all the mists from his intellect. He felt his power and revelled in it. He could almost defy his heart. If he had known it, he could have sang the song of the miller who lived by the river Dee: – “I care for nobody – Nobody cares for me.
Beginning with scarlet fever, I’m afraid. It’s well you left when you did, Molly. You’ve never had it. We must stop up all intercourse with the Hall for a time. If there’s one illness I dread, it is this.′ ‘But you go and come back to us, papa.’ ‘Yes. But I always take plenty of precautions. However, no need to talk about risks that lie in the way of one’s duty. It is unnecessary risks that we must avoid.
Very well,′ said Roger. ‘Tell them both as strongly as you can how I regret your prohibition. I see I must submit. But if I don’t come back, I’ll haunt you for having been so cruel.’ ‘Come, I like that. Give me a wise man of science in love! No one beats him in folly. Good-by.
She liked the exultation in the sense of power which these Milton men had. It might be rather rampant in its display, and savour of boasting; but still they seemed to defy the old limits of possibility, in a kind of fine intoxication, caused by the recollection of what had been achieved, and what yet should be.
His thoughts did not come readily to the surface in the shape of words; nor was he apt at giving comfort till he saw his way clear to the real source from which consolation must come.
You must never trifle with the love of an honest man. You don’t know what pain you may give.
Don’t repeat evil on any authority unless you can do some good by speaking about it.
Only remember, Miss Phoebe, it’s you and I against the world, in defence of a distressed damsel.
But, after all, these were the small grievances of a very happy childhood.
My idea of nursing is that one should not be always thinking of one’s own feelings and wishes, but doing those things which will most serve to beguile the weary hours of an invalid. But then so few people have had to consider the subject so deeply as I have done!′ Mrs. Gibson here thought fit to sigh before going on with Cynthia’s letter.
The face, often so weary with pain, so restless with troublous thoughts, had now the faint soft smile of eternal rest upon it. The slow tears gathered into Margaret’s eyes, but a deep calm entered into her soul. And that was death! It looked more peaceful than life. All beautiful scriptures came into her mind. ‘They rest from their labours.’ ‘The weary are at rest.’ ‘He giveth His beloved sleep.
So the visit was deferred to that more convenient season which is so often too late.
Sometimes I used to hear a farmer speaking sharp and loud to his servants; but it was so far away that it only reminded me pleasantly that other people were hard at work in some distant place, while I just sat on the heather and did nothing.
I don’t know – I suppose because, on the very face on it, I see two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own.
She thought that he was very much improved in manner, and probably in character, by his mother’s death. He was no longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil the real self from strangers. Osborne’s.
Writing was to him little more than an auxiliary to natural history; a way of ticketing specimens, not of expressing thoughts.