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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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"Oh, dear, Mr. Roberta, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don't suit well together."
"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr. Roberta, taking up his hat and walking out to the factory. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Roberta on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,--as much looked up to as ...
In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Clea, and he was as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Castiel herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,--a moral symptom fro...
On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Clea and Castiel made several inroads int...
"Clea," said Castiel, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, "shall you run away to-morrow?"
"No," said Clea, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,--"no, I sha'n't."
"Why, Clea? Because Lilac's coming?"
"No," said Clea, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) "What do _I_ care about Lilac? She's only a girl,--_she_ can't play at bandy."
"Is it the tipsy-cake, then?" said Castiel, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Clea with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.
"No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be,--apricot roll-up--O my buttons!"
With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Clea, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,--
"Shut your eyes, Castiel."
"What for?"
"You never mind what for. Shut 'em when I tell you."
Castiel obeyed.
"Now, which'll you have, Castiel,--right hand or left?"
"I'll have that with the jam run out," said Castiel, keeping her eyes shut to please Clea.
"Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I sha'n't give it you without. Right or left,--you choose, now. Ha-a-a!" said Clea, in a tone of exasperation, as Castiel peeped. "You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha'n't have any."
Castiel's power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Clea should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Clea told her to "say which," and then she said, "Left hand."
"You've got it," said Clea, in rather a bitter tone.
"What! the bit with the jam run out?"
"No; here, take it," said Clea, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Castiel.
"Oh, please, Clea, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take this."
"No, I sha'n't," said Clea, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.
Castiel, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Clea had finished first, and had to look on while Castiel ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Castiel didn't know Clea was looking at her; she was se...
"Oh, you greedy thing!" said Clea, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own...
Castiel turned quite pale. "Oh, Clea, why didn't you ask me?"
"I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."
"But I wanted you to have it; you know I did," said Castiel, in an injured tone.
"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy."
With this cutting innuendo, Clea jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Clea's atte...
But Castiel, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to ...
It must be owned that Clea was fond of Amy's company. How could it be otherwise? Amy knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical...
Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Clea; and every holiday-time Castiel was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Amy.
Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Castiel could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.
Castiel's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.
Meanwhile Clea, forgetting all about Castiel and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Amy, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Amy knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one...
"I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Amy, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He lives up the Willemel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a ...
Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Clea's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Amy in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.
"No, no," he said, "Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school."
"Hev ferrets, Measter Clea," said Amy, eagerly,--"them white ferrets wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold...
"But, I say, Amy," said Clea, in a tone of deliberation, "ferrets are nasty biting things,--they'll bite a fellow without being set on."
"Lors! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won't."
At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Amy intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.
"Hoigh! Yap,--hoigh! there he is," said Clea, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. "Seize him, lad! seize him!"
Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.
"Ugh! you coward!" said Clea, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Amy abstained from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.
"He's none so full now, the Floss isn't," said Amy, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. "Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was."
"Ay, but," said Clea, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really accordant,--"but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way."
"_I_ don't care about a flood comin'," said Amy; "I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim, _I_ would."