Datasets:
hannabaker
/
lf

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
106k
It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization, the sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and ...
Mrs. Leslie brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the ...
"Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Giovanna, rather sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs. Leslie sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she answered,--
"She's gone," unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.
"It isn't the glass this time, then," thought Mrs. Roberta.
"Died the day before yesterday," continued Mrs. Leslie; "an' her legs was as thick as my body,"' she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. "They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked."
"Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be," said Mrs. Giovanna, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; "but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part."
"But _I_ know," said Mrs. Leslie, sighing and shaking her head; "and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands."
"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heared of," said Mrs. Giovanna, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other occasions.
"She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they was like bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn't many old _par_ish'ners like her, I doubt."
"And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon," observed Mr. Leslie.
"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Leslie, "she'd another complaint ever so many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Leslie, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She _did_ say so," added Mrs. Leslie, begi...
"Sophy," said Mrs. Giovanna, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance,--"Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no ...
Mrs. Leslie was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Leslie had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her c...
"Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though," said Mr. Leslie, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction his wife's tears; "ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs. Sutton. And she's left no leggicies to speak on,--left it al...
"There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then," said Mrs. Giovanna, "if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when that's all you've got to pinch yourself for. Not as I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned; but it's a poor...
"I'm sure, sister," said Mrs. Leslie, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, "it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He told me about it himself--as free as could be--one Sunday w...
Mr. Leslie, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.
"They'll bring it upstairs, sister," said Mrs. Roberta, wishing to go at once, lest Mrs. Giovanna should begin to explain her feelings about Sophy's being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with doctor's stuff.
Mrs. Roberta was fond of going upstairs with her sister Leslie, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and discussing factoryinery in general. This was part of Bessy's weakness that stirred Mrs. Giovanna's sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well dressed, considering; and she was too prou...
She did to-day, when she and Clea came in from the garden with their father and their uncle Giovanna. Castiel had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lilac, who was standing by her mother's knee. Certainly the contrast between the cousins w...
She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like Lilac, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her hand--only the queen was Castiel herself in Lilac's form.
"Oh, Lilac," she burst out, after kissing her, "you'll stay with Clea and me, won't you? Oh, kiss her, Clea."
Clea, too, had come up to Lilac, but he was not going to kiss her--no; he came up to her with Castiel, because it seemed easier, on the whole, than saying, "How do you do?" to all those aunts and uncles. He stood looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and semi-smile which are common to shy bo...
"Heyday!" said aunt Giovanna, with loud emphasis. "Do little boys and gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts? That wasn't the way when _I_ was a little gell."
"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears," said Mrs. Roberta, looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Castiel a command to go and have her hair brushed.
"Well, and how do you do? And I hope you're good children, are you?" said Aunt Giovanna, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks much against their desire. "Look up, Clea, look up. Boys as go to boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Lo...
Aunt Giovanna always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy's children were so spoiled--they'd need have somebo...
"Well, my dears," said aunt Leslie, in a compassionate voice, "you grow wonderful fast. I doubt they'll outgrow their strength," she added, looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at their mother. "I think the gell has too much hair. I'd have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn't g...
"I can't say, I'm sure, sister," said Mrs. Kristi, shutting her lips close again, and looking at Castiel with a critical eye.
"No, no," said Mr. Roberta, "the child's healthy enough; there's nothing ails her. There's red wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it 'ud be as well if Bessy 'ud have the child's hair cut, so as it 'ud lie smooth."
A dreadful resolve was gathering in Castiel's breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Kristi whether she would leave Lilac behind. Aunt Kristi would hardly ever let Lilac come to see them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs. Kristi appealed to Lilac herself.
"You wouldn't like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lilac?"
"Yes, please, mother," said Lilac, timidly, blushing very pink all over her little neck.
"Well done, Lilac! Let her stay, Mrs. Kristi, let her stay," said Mr. Kristi, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of _physique_ to be seen in all ranks of English society,--bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen like Mr. Kristi, and you may see groc...
He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr. Roberta, whose box was only silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr. Roberta wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr. Kristi's box had been given him by the superior partners in the firm to whi...
"Castiel," said Mrs. Roberta, beckoning Castiel to her, and whispering in her ear, as soon as this point of Lilac's staying was settled, "go and get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did."
"Clea come out with me," whispered Castiel, pulling his sleeve as she passed him; and Clea followed willingly enough.
"Come upstairs with me, Clea," she whispered, when they were outside the door. "There's something I want to do before dinner."
"There's no time to play at anything before dinner," said Clea, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.
"Oh yes, there is time for this; _do_ come, Clea."
Clea followed Castiel upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
"What are they for, Castiel?" said Clea, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Castiel answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.
"Oh, my buttons! Castiel, you'll catch it!" exclaimed Clea; "you'd better not cut any more off."
Snip! went the great scissors again while Clea was speaking, and he couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Castiel would look so queer.
"Here, Clea, cut it behind for me," said Castiel, excited by her own daring, and anxious to finish the deed.
"You'll catch it, you know," said Clea, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.
"Never mind, make haste!" said Castiel, giving a little stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.