ogether, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done a bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what Mumps knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he Island Dresy does.”
“Your big thumb — what’s that, Bob?” said Maggie.
“That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. “It tells i’ measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, ‘cause it’s light for my pack, an’ it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb tells. I clap my thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut o’ the hither side of it, and the old women aren’t up to’t.”
“But Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “that’s cheating; I don’t like to hear you say that.”
“Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob regretfully. “Then I’m sorry I said it. But I’m so used Kurtka Peuterey Kobiety Twister Yd to talking to Mumps, an’ Tanner Kero Tröjor he doesn’t mind Maillot Icardi a bit o’ cheating, when it’s them skinflint women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ‘ud like to Maillot Granada get their flannel for nothing, an’ ‘ud niver ask theirselves how Celtic I got my dinner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat me, Miss — lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o’ sport, an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.”
“Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come again to see Tom.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round he said, “I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big thumb, if you don’t think well on me for it, Miss; but it ‘ud be a pity, it would. I Morgan Rielly Tröja couldn’t find another trick so good — an’ what ‘ud be the use o’ havin’ a big thumb? It might as well ha’ been narrow.”
Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of herself; at which her worshipper’s blue eyes twinkled too, and under these favoring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.
The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke’s grand dirge over Maillot Everton them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and Roma Dresy man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he pricked on to the fight.
That gleam of merriment soon Belgie Dres Dámské died away from Maggie’s face, and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob’s present of books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought that the light-hearted Maillot Perou Bob had Ryan Spooner Tröja a lot much happier than hers.
Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened with the brightnelinks:
http://www.dwats.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
http://www.dvd.net.au/search.cgi
http://www.travelan.biz/cgi-bin/search.cgi |
