'Bread,' Which
Sounds A Commonplace, Plain-Sailing Monosyllable In England, Was
The Word That Most Delighted These Good Ladies Of Monastier; It
Seemed To Them Frolicsome And Racy, Like A Page Of Pickwick; And
They All Got It Carefully By Heart, As A Stand-By, I Presume, For
Winter Evenings.
I have tried it since then with every sort of
accent and inflection, but I seem to lack the sense of humour.
They were of all ages: children at their first web of lace, a
stripling girl with a bashful but encouraging play of eyes, solid
married women, and grandmothers, some on the top of their age and
some falling towards decrepitude. One and all were pleasant and
natural, ready to laugh and ready with a certain quiet solemnity
when that was called for by the subject of our talk. Life, since
the fall in wages, had begun to appear to them with a more serious
air. The stripling girl would sometimes laugh at me in a
provocative and not unadmiring manner, if I judge aright; and one
of the grandmothers, who was my great friend of the party, gave me
many a sharp word of judgment on my sketches, my heresy, or even my
arguments, and gave them with a wry mouth and a humorous twinkle in
her eye that were eminently Scottish. But the rest used me with a
certain reverence, as something come from afar and not entirely
human. Nothing would put them at their ease but the irresistible
gaiety of my native tongue.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 198 of 262
Words from 52926 to 53183
of 70588
