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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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"Yes, you're silly; but I never _do_ forget things, _I_ don't."
"Oh, please forgive me, Clea; my heart will break," said Castiel, shaking with sobs, clinging to Clea's arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.
Clea shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone, "Now, Castiel, you just listen. Aren't I a good brother to you?"
"Ye-ye-es," sobbed Castiel, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.
"Didn't I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't?"
"Ye-ye-es--and I--lo-lo-love you so, Clea."
"But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I'd set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing."
"But I didn't mean," said Castiel; "I couldn't help it."
"Yes, you could," said Clea, "if you'd minded what you were doing. And you're a naughty girl, and you sha'n't go fishing with me to-morrow."
With this terrible conclusion, Clea ran away from Castiel toward the factory, meaning to greet Amaya there, and complain to him of Harry.
Castiel stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Clea was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be; and now he...
"Oh, he is cruel!" Castiel sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable to be angry.
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
Castiel soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself,--hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night,--and then they would all be frightened, and Clea would be sorry. Th...
Clea had been too much interested in his talk with Amaya, in going the round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and whittling sticks without any particular reason,--except that he didn't whittle sticks at school,--to think of Castiel and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant to punish h...
"I don't know," said Clea. He didn't want to "tell" of Castiel, though he was angry with her; for Clea Roberta was a lad of honor.
"What! hasn't she been playing with you all this while?" said the father. "She'd been thinking o' nothing but your coming home."
"I haven't seen her this two hours," says Clea, commencing on the plumcake.
"Goodness heart; she's got drownded!" exclaimed Mrs. Roberta, rising from her seat and running to the window.
"How could you let her do so?" she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn't know whom of she didn't know what.
"Nay, nay, she's none drownded," said Mr. Roberta. "You've been naughty to her, I doubt, Clea?"
"I'm sure I haven't, father," said Clea, indignantly. "I think she's in the house."
"Perhaps up in that attic," said Mrs. Roberta, "a-singing and talking to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times."
"You go and fetch her down, Clea," said Mr. Roberta, rather sharply,--his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Castiel making him suspect that the lad had been hard upon "the little un," else she would never have left his side. "And be good to her, do you hear? Else I'll let you know better."
Clea never disobeyed his father, for Mr. Roberta was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending to reprieve Castiel's punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Clea was only thirteen, an...
It was Clea's step, then, that Castiel heard on the stairs, when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her head and say, "Never mind, my wench." It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love,--th...
But she knew Clea's step, and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said, "Castiel, you're to come down." But she rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, "Oh, Clea, please forgive me--I can't bear it--I will always be good--always rem...
We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness o...
"Don't cry, then, Magsie; here, eat a bit o' cake."
Castiel's sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Clea bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies.
"Come along, Magsie, and have tea," said Clea at last, when there was no more cake except what was down-stairs.
So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Castiel was trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Clea was good to her. She had told Clea,...
They were on their way to the Round Pool,--that wonderful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago. No one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. Th...
Castiel was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Clea drew out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on the grass.
Clea was excited.
"O Magsie, you little duck! Empty the basket."
Castiel was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Clea called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light dripping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds ...
It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the factory with its booming...
Life did change for Clea and Castiel; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every sprin...
The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and del...
The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming
It was Easter week, and Mrs. Roberta's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. "A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Rio the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family p...
"I'd as lief not invite sister Kristi this time," said Mrs. Roberta, "for she's as jealous and having as can be, and's allays trying to make the worst o' my poor children to their aunts and uncles."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Roberta, "ask her to come. I never hardly get a bit o' talk with Kristi now; we haven't had him this six months. What's it matter what she says? My children need be beholding to nobody."
"That's what you allays say, Mr. Roberta; but I'm sure there's nobody o' your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave 'em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there's sister Giovanna, and sister Leslie too, saving money unknown, for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too; their husbands buy ...
"Tchuh!" said Mr. Roberta. "It takes a big loaf when there's many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters' bits o' money when they've got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister Kristi won't get 'em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on 'em when they are dead?"
"I don't know what she won't get 'em to do," said Mrs. Roberta, "for my children are so awk'ard wi' their aunts and uncles. Castiel's ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Clea doesn't like 'em, bless him!--though it's more nat'ral in a boy than a gell. And there's Lilac Dean's such a good chi...
"Well, well, if you're fond o' the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with 'em. And won't you ask their aunt and uncle Patrice too, and some o' _their_ children?"