FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83  
84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   >>   >|  
e old school," and his manner produced an effect of ostentation which was foreign to his character as a Christian and a gentleman. His eyebrows, which were still dark and thick, hung prominently over his small, sparkling eyes behind gold rimmed spectacles, while a lock of silver hair was brushed across his forehead with the romantic wave which was fashionable in the period when Lord Byron was the favorite poet. Kindness and something more--something that was almost a touching innocence, looked from his face. "It is a good world--I've always found it to be a good world, and if I've ever heard anything against it, I've refused to believe it," his look seemed to say. All through breakfast he rambled on after his amiable habit--praising the food, praising the flowers, praising the country, praising the universe. The only creature or object he omitted to praise was Kesiah--for in his heart he regarded it as an outrage on the part of Providence that a woman should have been created quite so ugly. While he talked he kept his eyes turned away from her, gazing abstractedly through the window or at a portrait of Mrs. Gay, painted in the first year of her marriage, which hung over the sideboard. In the mental world which he inhabited all women were fair and fragile and endowed with a quality which he was accustomed to describe as "solace." When occasionally, as in the case of Kesiah, one was thrust upon his notice, to whom by no stretch of the imagination these graces could be attributed, he disposed of the situation by the simple device of gazing above her head. In his long and intimate acquaintance, he had never looked Kesiah in the face, and he never intended to. He was perfectly aware that if he were for an instant to forget himself so far as to contemplate her features, he should immediately lose all patience with her. No woman, he felt, had the right to affront so openly a man's ideal of what the sex should be. When he spoke of her behind her back it was with indignant sympathy as "poor Miss Kesiah," or "that poor good soul Kesiah Blount"--for in spite of a natural bent for logic, and more than forty years of sedulous attendance upon the law, he harboured at the bottom of his heart an unreasonable conviction that Kesiah's plainness was, somehow, the result of her not having chosen to be pretty. "Any sport, Jonathan?" he inquired cheerfully, while he buttered his waffles. "If I scared up one Molly Cotton-tail out of the br
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83  
84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Kesiah
 

praising

 

looked

 

gazing

 

instant

 
forget
 
features
 

perfectly

 
quality
 

solace


contemplate

 

accustomed

 
intended
 

describe

 
intimate
 

graces

 
attributed
 
imagination
 

stretch

 

notice


disposed

 

situation

 

thrust

 

occasionally

 

simple

 

device

 

acquaintance

 

chosen

 

pretty

 

result


bottom

 
harboured
 

unreasonable

 

conviction

 

plainness

 
Jonathan
 

Cotton

 
scared
 

cheerfully

 
inquired

buttered
 

waffles

 
attendance
 
endowed
 

openly

 

affront

 
patience
 

indignant

 
sedulous
 

natural