at length issued forth to inquire into the nature of the uproar. She thought that some of them had been laying violent hands on me; and, not daring to attack her mas- ter, she turned her vocal artillery against the younger scoundrel. "Well, Mr. Earnshaw," she cried, "I wonder what you'll have agait next! Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones? I see this house will never do for me. Look at t' poor lad; he's fair choking!--Wisht, wisht! you munn't go on so. Come in, and I'll cure that. There now, hold ye still." With these words she suddenly splashed a pint of icy water down my neck, and pulled me into the kitchen. Mr. Heathcliff followed, his accidental merriment ex- piring quickly in his habitual moroseness. I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy and faint, and thus compelled perforce to accept lodgings under his roof. He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room; while she condoled with me on my sorry predicament, and having obeyed his orders, whereby I was somewhat revived, ushered me to bed. CHAPTER III. While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hide the candle, and not make a noise, for her master had an odd notion about the cham- ber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered. She had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious. Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed. The whole furni- ture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows. Having approached this structure, I looked inside, and perceived it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conveniently designed to ob- viate the necessity for every member of the family hav- ing a room to himself. In fact, it formed a little closet; and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table. I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff and every one else. The ledge where I placed my candle had a few mil- dewed books piled up in one corner, and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, how- ever, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small---Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the win- dow, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw ---Heathcliff---Linton, till my eyes closed. But they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark as vivid as spectres---the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle-wick


arms giving her the sensation of weightlessness? He’d made her feel almost . . . peaceful. Protected. How could the same man who made her want to screech like a banshee get that reaction out of her? No way to know. But the effect of him . . . lingered. Hard. “There was also some talk of giant tent rentals. Giant.” The corkscrew blonde tilted her head, but it was hard to discern whether she was sympathetic or excited. “You’re getting the full Napa wedding treatment whether you like it or not. Corinne is taking the flash-and-awe approach to fooling the local flavor and I want in, too. I’m an agent of chaos, Natalie. I can’t help it, I crave the danger.” “How do I know you’re not on an undercover mission?” Natalie narrowed her eyes over the rim of her mug. “Are you wearing a wire, Welch?” Without a moment’s hesitation, her brother’s girlfriend lifted the Stanford T-shirt to reveal a pair of rainbow panties and two very impressive tatas. She dropped the shirt again after a moment and Natalie hummed into a sip. “What kind of services are you offering?” “Floral arrangements, obviously. But also . . .” Hallie stepped forward, coming farther into the light. “Literally anything nefarious. Namely bachelorette party planning. I got you.” “You’re a little nuts, aren’t you, Hallie?” “I wrote your brother secret admirer letters and got jealous when he wrote me back.” “Good point.” Natalie tapped a finger against the side of her mug. “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m entering into this phony union with someone I once called diseased foreskin? Or are you not asking because you already know?” “Julian and I have been talking about . . . you know.” Hallie flushed so rapidly, it was a wonder her legs had enough blood in them to keep her upright. “Marriage. To each other. And he might have mentioned something about a trust fund that will be released once that happens. He’s, um . . . well, he asked if I’d be opposed to him putting that money back into the winery. When the time comes.” A pang caught Natalie in the throat. “Well, he’s a lot more selfless than I am.” “No.” Hallie shook her head. “He’s just in a better position to help at this moment.” “I would help if they asked. If I thought they wanted my help—” She cut herself off with a wave of her hand, forcing a smile. “I appreciate your offer to help, crazy pants. I accept. I will feed your need for chaos as long as you keep my secret among family.” Hallie closed her eyes slowly, hands pressing together between her breasts. “Thank you. I hereby declare myself your secret minion.” “Just don’t ask me to call you that.” Natalie switched off the coffee maker and sauntered toward the hallway, half a cup in hand. Before exiting, she stopped in front of Hallie, who was all but quivering in excitement. “My brother has no idea what he’s gotten into, does he?” “Actually,


him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. "Well, I think I'm glad Bly agrees with ME!" "You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," I went on bravely, "that you've been enjoying yourself." "Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles away. I've never been so free." He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. "Well, do you like it?" He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do YOU?"-- more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. "Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we're alone together now it's you that are alone most. But I hope," he threw in, "you don't particularly mind!" "Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company--you're so beyond me-- I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?" He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. "You stay on just for THAT?" "Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your while. That needn't surprise you." My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. "Don't you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you?" "Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. "Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!" "It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. "But, you know, you didn't do it." "Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness,


woman under the circumstances, but it had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness! Then when his face grew grave and stern again I asked him why his mirth, and why at such a time. His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was logical and forceful and mysterious. He said, "Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, `May I come in?' is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, `I am here.' Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl. I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn. I give my time, my skill, my sleep. I let my other sufferers want that she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say `Thud, thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same. "There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear,`Here I am! Here I am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go


it?" "Of course I did." "Well, you don't mind my looking at it now?" Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture." "You will some day, surely?" [58] "Never." "Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-by, Dorian. You have been the one person in my life of whom I have been really fond. I don't suppose I shall often see you again. You don't know what it cost me to tell you all that I have told you." "My dear Basil," cried Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you felt that you liked me too much. That is not even a compliment." "It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession." "A very disappointing one." "Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else in the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?" "No: there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn't talk about not meeting me again, or anything of that kind. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so." "You have got Harry," said Hallward, sadly. "Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I don't think I would go to Harry if I was in trouble. I would sooner go to you, Basil." "But you won't sit to me again?" "Impossible!" "You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes across two ideal things. Few come across one." "I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant." "Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward, regretfully. "And now good-by. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture once again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel about it." As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! how little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him! Basil's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences,--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance. He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to have the thing remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends had access. CHAPTER VIII [...58] When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if


photo as well as a name, until he finds the man with proud Roman features, who is as noble-looking as Julius Caesar but whose eyes suggest a Nero who sets fires for pleasure and delights in the suffering of others. Durand Calaphas. FIRE MARSHAL Durand Calaphas is indifferent to most people. Their lives hold no interest for him. In his estimation, their beliefs are generally foolish, and their passions are tedious. They have no destiny except to work, pay taxes, consume, and die—all while, preferably, making little trouble. In a world shaped to a more intelligent plan, there would be fewer of their kind, which is a basic doctrine of the New Truth. He calls them “Extras” because they are to him like the actor wannabes who people the crowd scenes of movies, given no dialogue and lacking the talent to be granted any. Calaphas does his part to correct the problem of that excess population. The only people he has more than a passing interest in are those whom he is authorized to liquidate. Unlike the Extras, people who earn termination are figures of at least some substance, if only because they have done something to earn a death sentence and therefore make themselves part of Calaphas’s destiny, which is one of greatness. Occasionally, he encounters someone who isn’t on his kill list but to whom he is not indifferent, to whom he takes an immediate and intense dislike. Nolan Freeman, the fire marshal for this county, is one of those. The first thing Calaphas sees when he enters Freeman’s office, on the top floor of a three-story firehouse, is a memorial wall of firefighters who died on duty in this jurisdiction. Each is pictured on a small plaque that is fixed to a larger display with room for additions; under the photo is his or her name, length of service, and date of death. At the top of this honor roll, in the center of its width, the phrase AMERICAN HEROES is written in fancy script. Surmounting it all is a flag fixed flat to the wall. Calaphas hates the idea of heroes, which he believes is merely a tool with which the gullible are manipulated into doing all the dirty, dangerous work of society for meager wages, forfeiting their meaningless lives in a lost cause. He despises the flag and America, which will soon be washed away by the New Truth. He interprets the memorial wall as the work of either a fool who believes in duty, sacrifice, justice, freedom, and the sacred value of life, or a phony whose every word and action is calculated to burnish his image in the eyes of his superiors. Given the uncompromising principles by which Calaphas lives, he finds it difficult to smile at Nolan Freeman and shake his hand. He would prefer to kill the sonofabitch and cut off his genitals and nail them to the memorial wall. However, he’s seeking information related to Michael Mace that might prove essential to understanding that fugitive and finding him; he must play the


returned to the stables, but he’d had to watch from the window of the library while he and Mr. North, his man of business, had been going through a detailed report of how much Father’s sugar farm was costing them. It was terribly dull work, but it was important. And far better than discussing William’s perilous health with Mr. Pritchard. According to the doctor, there was more to William’s state than simply a fever, and Simon did not have the capacity to wonder why his brother had a half-healed scar from what looked like a pistol ball. “You’re saying he was shot?” Simon had asked incredulously. “I’m saying he was lucky to be alive before this fever ever hit,” the physician had replied. None of the rumors Simon had heard in Town had involved William being shot, so the injury was simply another mystery—one Simon wasn’t sure he had the energy to solve. Whatever William did with his free time, Simon was inclined to let his brother deal with the consequences himself so he could focus on the businesses that kept him far too busy. Particularly this failing one. Thank the heavens he had not had to travel to the West Indies to see to the affairs himself. He had had the foresight to convince his father to hire a steward, who kept up regular correspondence and seemed open to being managed from afar. Simon knew the chance was great that the man was lying with every word he wrote and that every pound that came out of the crops went straight to his pocket, but he hoped for the best. Father had loved this venture in particular, and Simon would hate to see it fail. “Assuming everything reported is correct,” North was saying—Simon reluctantly pulled himself away from the window to pay attention—“I still don’t see how keeping the farm will do anything but drain the full allotment we’ve given this business. It is barely breaking even as it is, what with you paying such high wages to the workers.” Simon was afraid of that, but he refused to treat those who worked the farm as anything less than they deserved as productive employees. “You wrote to Mr. Wyndham, didn’t you?” The man owned land near Simon’s and paid similar wages, and his farm had been thriving for the last two years. North nodded. “I did. He agreed to take on your workers if you sell the land to him for three quarters of what you offered it for.” Settling heavy in his chair, Simon thought that over. Father had not bought a large farm, thankfully, but if they kept trying to keep the place alive, other ventures would suffer. Wyndham had more resources and could easily make Simon’s land profitable. But for such a low selling price? Simon wasn’t worried about going poor—his position had its perks, and the family had assets to spare—but admitting defeat and selling at three quarters of what the land was worth, like North was sure to suggest he do, meant he had failed and


might suppose, and that I sent 'em all my love - especially to little Em'ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?' The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection - I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face - and parted. From that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define. She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me. In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul. 'Oh, Davy!' she said. 'That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.' They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread- and-butter, and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than look down, or look away. 'Master Copperfield's box there!' said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were heard at the gate. I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door. the box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in. 'Clara!' said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note. 'Ready, my dear Jane,' returned my mother. 'Good-bye, Davy. You are going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home in the holidays, and be a better boy.' 'Clara!' Miss Murdstone repeated. 'Certainly, my dear Jane,' replied my mother, who was holding me. 'I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!' 'Clara!' Miss Murdstone repeated. Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it. CHAPTER 5 I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief


than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. `You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, `a great girl like you,' (she might well say this), `to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall. After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!' Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, `If you please, sir--' The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go. Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: `Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!' And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them. `I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, `for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, SHE'S she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome--no, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I'll try and say "How doth the little--"' and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do:--


whether William had been returning for a visit or for a more extended stay or for any time at all, there was the chance he had intended to take up a more permanent residence at his estate before the storm and subsequent fever had derailed his plans. None of that would matter if he never woke up. “Please wake up,” she whispered, gripping his hand a little tighter. If anyone would help her, surely he would. He had done it before. “I need you to wake up and help me fix all of this. Please.” Chapter Seven “Blast your inability to stay whole through a rainstorm, William!” Simon paced the corridor near his brother’s chamber, trying to work up the courage to go inside and try to wake him enough to have a conversation. Just a tiny little conversation. Enough for the man to explain how he could have spent five years in London with no plans to settle down and then show up out of the blue—and engaged, no less, to a woman as charming as Miss Staley. Two minutes of talking to the woman, and Simon already knew she was too good for William. He had honestly thought he was dreaming when he woke in the library and found her perusing his books. Her dark hair had caught his eye immediately, contrasting the green dress she wore, and her eyes were even darker. He’d never seen a more handsome woman, and Olivia’s declaration of who she was had only made the belief that he was trapped in a dream stronger. But no, Mother had confirmed it, and Mother never lied. William was engaged to be married, and Simon needed to know why. “There has to be a reason,” he muttered to himself as he paced. Miss Staley was too sensible to have fallen into some sort of trap. True, Simon knew nothing about her, but he was skilled at recognizing a person’s values, and he could tell she had a good character. And William may have been wild at times and had been in plenty of scrapes, but he was not a total fool. With how lightly he’d always treated the idea of settling down, he would never get himself into a situation in which a marriage was necessary. This was exactly why Simon needed to talk to William. What had changed to convince him to take a wife when doing so would force him to adapt to a new lifestyle? Sure, he could keep roaming the country and hop over to France or Spain whenever he was feeling trapped at home, but people would talk. A bachelor acting that way was commonplace; a married man never at home was not. Not without certain implications, and William would not compromise his family that way. Simon groaned, running a hand through his hair despite the fact that his valet would get angry with him for ruining his coiffure so early in the day. He usually lasted a few hours longer than this. William wouldn’t hurt his family. Would he? It had


then struck off to walk all the way to London. For, I had by that time come to myself so far, as to consider that I could not go back to the inn and see Drummle there; that I could not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out. It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing the narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access to the Temple was close by the river-side, through Whitefriars. I was not expected till to-morrow, but I had my keys, and, if Herbert were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing him. As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate after the Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, I did not take it ill that the night-porter examined me with much attention as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in. To help his memory I mentioned my name. "I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir. The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read it by my lantern?" Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the words, "PLEASE READ THIS, HERE." I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing: "DON'T GO HOME." Chapter 45 Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I made the best of my way to Fleet-street, and there got a late hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fire-place and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner. As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of those virtuous days - an object like the ghost of a walking-cane, which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls. When I had got into bed, and lay there footsore, weary, and wretched, I found that I could


when the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side or water-line, it was just the same. - Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything that was picturesque. One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself on being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for the day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my head. "Joe," said I; "don't you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?" "Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?" "What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?" "There is some wisits, p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might think you wanted something - expected something of her." "Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?" "You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she might credit it. Similarly she mightn't." Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition. "You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, "Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were all." "Yes, Joe. I heard her." "ALL," Joe repeated, very emphatically. "Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her." "Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were - Make a end on it! - As you was! - Me to the North, and you to the South! - Keep in sunders!" I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more probable. "But, Joe." "Yes, old chap." "Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after her, or shown that I remember her." "That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes all four round - and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of hoofs--" "I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a present." But


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

story of Wall-Street) > Digitalizzazione a cura di Yorikarus @ forum.tntvillage.scambioetico.org < I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel. Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented. Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion. Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very


see things that smarter people like you overthink.” “Like me?” I say, both flattered he considers me smart and insulted that he believes I overthink things. “What I mean is that sometimes facts just get in the way. Sure, you’re Lenora Hope’s caregiver and you think she can’t hurt anyone.” “Because she can’t.” “You’re still overthinking,” Kenny says. “There’s more to everyone than meets the eye. You, me, even Lenora Hope. Look at us. Back when we first decided to . . .” “Fuck,” I say, because that’s all it was. “Right. Back then, I knew what happened to your mom and what everyone was saying about you. But I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. I just knew in my gut that you were a good person.” A lump forms in my throat. No one has said that about me for a very long time. That it comes from Kenny, of all people, makes me understand just how much my father’s silence has hurt me. He’s the one who should be telling me this. Not the guy I started sleeping with just because I was starved for human contact. “Thank you,” I say. “No problem,” Kenny replies with a shrug. “But on the flip side, sometimes your gut tells you something else. So while Lenora looks like she can’t do much, maybe, like you, there’s more than meets the eye.” There’s certainly more to Kenny than I expected. Back when we were having no-strings afternoon sex, I had no idea there was this kind of wisdom inside him. But before I can give him too much credit, he grabs my waist, pulls me close, and sloppily kisses me. I push him away, worried that Mrs. Baker is still watching from the front door. “It’s not going to happen, Kenny.” “Thought I’d give it a shot,” he says, flashing that horny grin I’ve seen dozens of times since May. “I should go anyway. Take care of yourself, Kit. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.” Kenny gives me a playful wink before sprinting to the wall at the end of the lawn and scaling it with zero effort. Then, with a corny salute, he turns and hops off the wall, vanishing from view. Turning around, I take in the entirety of Hope’s End. From the vantage point of the lawn, it looks enormous, forbidding. It’s easy to forget that when you’re on the inside, navigating its bloodstained stairs and tilted halls. Lenora’s the same way. I remember the fear I felt when stepping into her room for the first time. Her reputation preceded her. Now that I’ve gotten to know her, that reputation has, if not faded, at least been made more benign by familiarity. Not anymore, thanks to Kenny. Now my gut tells me I was wrong about initially thinking there are only four people at Hope’s End who could have shoved Mary off the terrace. There’s someone else. A fifth, highly unlikely suspect. But now a suspect all the same. Lenora. TWENTY-SEVEN Back in


at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold--and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it--and then went on to think again. At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close. He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued--not a rustle--not a breath--Guilty. The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday. The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the demand was made; but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he was an old man--an old man--and so, dropping into a whisper, was silent again. The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery, uttered some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive; the sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and obeyed. They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to HIM; but, as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars: and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison. Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there--alone. He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat and bedstead; and casting his blood-shot eyes upon the ground, tried


if anybody has a problem with that, they can very much go fuck themselves. Nobody, it turns out, has a problem with that. Or, if they do, they pretend not to. Or, just as likely, they’re too tipsy to notice. One of the women is an artist. She wears trousers and has her hair down and Nick is massively intimidated. The other two women work at the museum with Jeanne, but Nick hardly gets a chance to say a word to either of them because they sit very close on the couch, their heads bent together, their voices inaudible to anyone else. Of the three men, one is a friend of Andy’s from prep school who is currently going to law school at Columbia and hating every minute of it; he is, therefore, sauced. Another of the men is a banker who spends the evening doting on Jeanne. And the third man. Well. “Nick, right? Emily told me I’d particularly enjoy meeting you.” His voice goes all singsongy on particularly. His name is Ted and he’s a few years older than the rest of them, a bit over thirty, and apparently he works at an art gallery where Emily’s boss did a photo shoot. “Did she?” Nick raises an eyebrow. “She said we might have some friends in common.” Nick would put the odds at zero that they know a single soul in common. Which means only one thing. “I suppose we go to a lot of the same places,” he suggests blandly. “I bet we do,” Ted says, a grin spreading across his handsome face. Nick is going to kill Emily. Or thank her, possibly. This guy doesn’t look like an undercover cop, at least. There’s no way Emily Warburton knows anyone so lowly as a cop, so that’s some comfort. How, though, did Emily figure it out? Andy doesn’t even know. When Ted talks to Nick, he’s flirty and camp and not making any secret of who or what he is. But when they sit down at the enormous linen-draped table and eat honest-to-God pheasant, he reins in his whole demeanor and becomes only a little bit camp. Nick has always counted himself lucky for being able to blend in with everyone else. He can pretend to be like any other man, and he’s fortunate that it’s even an option for him. But he’s twenty-five and he’s already tired. He’s so careful, all the time, about everything, from not letting himself look too long at other men to being almost paranoid about who he picks up. But the stakes are too high for anything else. He’ll lose his job if he gets arrested or if the Chronicle finds out he’s queer. He’ll never get another job at another newspaper. The situation with his family will be unbearable. He’ll wind up waiting tables on Mott Street or knocking heads together outside a bar. He knows things are different for artists and maybe they’re different for people who work in art galleries, too. He tries not to think too hard about it,


jumper before her coat, and as always my attention is first drawn to the marks on her cheeks. “Not scars, Baaba. Tribal marks.” She lives in North London and has her own list of health problems, not limited to sore joints, so she only comes by once or twice a month. But her monthly appearance serves us better than James’s. She brings Dad homemade pepper soup, which I put straight on the stove, and she sits with her brother for hours talking in Twi. Dad understands more of his language than English (maybe because he’s been speaking it since he was old enough to) and, these days, even finds it easier to communicate in. I can understand what’s being said, even when interchanged between Twi and Fante, but I wish I could speak the language. My parents spoke it all the time at home, but James and I only got as far as understanding it, always responding in English. We’d be prompted to do otherwise, but we could never grasp it and I didn’t consider it important in my more adaptable, formative years; all my friends spoke English, and I still understood what my parents were saying regardless, so why bother? I never thought a day would come when I felt left out. If I hadn’t made it clear before, let me do that now. Dad doesn’t get a lot of visitors. He never had many friends; used to be a bit of a recluse, a hermit. Mum often jokes he’s where I get my solitary nature from. She made it seem as if it’s one of Dad’s faults, that he lacks social graces. I, however, see it for what it really is: he’s an introvert. The world is filled with two different kinds of people: those who need to be surrounded by others and those who do not. Dad and I are simply the latter, James and Mum the former. Whenever Auntie Mabel comes round, I wonder what became of Dad’s few friends. I’ve never asked, and now he won’t remember. There used to be a man Dad would laugh, watch football, and drink beer with. A man I called Uncle (he wasn’t blood-related) … Richard? Albert? Caleb? I sometimes think about what happened to him. It’s possible Uncle X saw Dad’s health deteriorating and couldn’t handle it. It happens. When people are ill to the point of no return to full health, to the person they used to be, some don’t have the stomach to stick around. We don’t appreciate being reminded of our own body’s weaknesses, our lack of control and inevitable mortality. Or maybe moving from Battersea to Croydon put distance between them, a distance Uncle X couldn’t be bothered to continually cross. Now Dad doesn’t have any friends who aren’t family. Which isn’t entirely the case for me, but not too far off. If I were Dad, which of my friends would I see monthly? Who would come to visit me with a home-cooked meal? Would James even? I hang around for a few minutes, then excuse


with a croupier to rake in the cards and call the amount of each bank and a chef de partie to umpire the game generally. I shall be sitting as near dead opposite Le Chiffre as I can get. In front of him he has a shoe containing six packs of cards, well shuffled. There's absolutely no chance of tampering with the shoe. The cards are shuffled by the croupier and cut by one of the players and put into the shoe in full view of the table. We've checked on the staff and they're all okay. It would be useful, but almost impossible, to mark all the cards, and it would mean the connivance at least of the croupier. Anyway, we shall be watching for that too.' Bond drank some champagne and continued. 'Now what happens at the game is this. The banker announces an opening bank of five hundred thousand francs, of five hundred pounds as it is now. Each seat is numbered from the right of the banker and the player next to the banker, or Number 1, can accept this bet and push his money out on to the table, or pass it, if it is too much for him or he doesn't want to take it. Then Number 2 has the right to take it, and if he refuses, then Number 3, and so on round the table. If no single player takes it all, the bet is offered to the table as a whole and everyone chips in, including sometimes the spectators round the table, until the five hundred thousand is made up. 'That is a small bet which would immediately be met, but when it gets to a million or two it's often difficult to find a taker or even, if the bank seems to be in luck, a group of takers to cover the bet. At the moment I shall always try and step in and accept the bet - in fact, I shall attack Le Chiffre's bank whenever I get a chance until either I've bust his bank or he's bust me. It may take some time, but in the end one of us is bound to break the other, irrespective of the other players at the table, although they can, of course, make him richer or poorer in the meantime. 'Being the banker, he's got a slight advantage in the play, but knowing that I'm making a dead set at him and not knowing, I hope, my capital, is bound to play on his nerves a bit, so I'm hoping that we start about equal.' He paused while the strawberries came and the avocado pear. For a while they ate in silence, then they talked of other things while the coffee was served. They smoked. Neither of them drank brandy or a liqueur. Finally, Bond felt it was time to explain the actual mechanics of the game. 'It's a simple affair,' he said, 'and you'll understand it at once if you've ever played vingt-et-un, where the object is to get cards from


is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption -- and from whom?" "We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork," said Dr. Mortimer. "Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagina- tion, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel." "How in the world can you say that?" "If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?" He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes. "Well?" "Nothing," said he, throwing it down. "It is a blank half- sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?" "Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not." "You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?" "I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel," said our visitor. "Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?" "We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?" "Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting." "I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting." Sir Henry smiled. "I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here." "You have lost one of your boots?" "My dear sir," cried Dr. Mortimer, "it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is


from worries about biological weapons to whispers of nuclear dirty bombs. A gas mask was hidden under every seat in the U.S. House. But fear gave way to cooperation, as members of Congress crossed the aisle to compromise on sweeping legislation. The master class in bipartisanship culminated, for me, in President George W. Bush’s 2005 State of the Union Address. Despite having just come off of a contentious presidential campaign, he entered the chamber’s arched doorway to applause and handshakes from Republicans and Democrats. “We have known times of sorrow and hours of uncertainty and days of victory,” he declared, as I stood by the page desk in the back. “In all this history, even when we have disagreed, we have seen threads of purpose that unite us.” The room applauded in agreement. I had found my tribe. Roaming the musty marble passageways of Congress, I grew surer of my views as a Republican. I was a “compassionate conservative,” the kind George W. Bush spoke about when he called for a government that used the free market to eliminate poverty, that openly welcomed immigrants who sought to join our country, and that championed freedom and human dignity around the globe. Joining the GOP tribe also seemed like the best way to defend the country; Republicans, after all, portrayed themselves as the party that was ready to stand up against enemies to our democracy. What was meant to be a year turned into a whirlwind decade. I could hardly stay in school, although I was obsessed with good grades. From elementary to graduate school, I was a straight-A psychopath (except for a lonely B+ on my seventh-grade report card). Valedictorian. Indiana State Debate Champion. Full ride at Indiana University as an undergrad. Full ride at Oxford University as a grad student. But I was bored. I dropped out of school multiple times to take jobs in Washington because I was more interested in sitting in secure briefing rooms, digging into intelligence gathered overseas by U.S. spies, than sitting in classrooms. I trained my strengths—and anxieties—toward supporting national leaders, from preparing research memos at the White House and Pentagon to briefing CIA directors and Homeland Security secretaries. The stainless boy from a Midwest flyover state was awestruck at having a top-secret security clearance. I grew up fast and learned to stay in the background safeguarding information, knowing that lives were in the balance and that I was responsible for protecting the “sources and methods” of our spy agencies. Just as the kid inside me had yearned, I was working alongside the good guys to fight the bad ones, or so I thought. Washington changed in the years after 9/11. After spending time in the executive branch, the private sector, and grad school, I returned to Capitol Hill in my late twenties and found a very different place. Some of the people I looked up to had turned out to be not-so-good guys (including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who’d been arrested, charged, and later convicted in a hush-money scheme related to sexual misconduct with minors).


in Chinese poetry. The nineteenth-century crossbreeding experimentations that resulted in the plumcot. The cyanide in the stone. Maud’s mind had awakened, new facts and anecdotes always cropping up. And so had her body, she thought, as she and Gabriel clinked mugs. In his presence, each gesture—as small as taking the manila folder he pushed across the table—felt heightened, unconsciously orchestrated. And she gathered his gestures too, like clues: the way he threw back his head as he laughed at her description of forgetting her shoes earlier, the way he caught his lower lip in his teeth as the two of them looked over the laboratory results. “High carbon,” she said. “The conservatory fire?” “Probably.” They were talking about work, but another conversation ran under the surface. She’d had workplace crushes before, most recently on a literary historian in Sussex whom she’d met at a pub for passionate discussions about the flowers in William Wordsworth’s poems until he put his hand on her knee under the table and she realized that she’d gone too far. It was a delicate game, she thought, as she and Gabriel ate, feeding your sensuality, remembering that you had a sense of humor and a clitoris while continuing to follow the rules of marriage. Those rules were out the window now that she and Peter had separated. But she felt more at ease with Gabriel pretending they were still there, so she’d given him no indication that her marriage was in trouble. “Twenty more minutes and we go,” she said, as the moon appeared like an open parenthesis. “If I still prayed, I’d be praying right now.” “When did you stop?” Gabriel was eating chow mein out of a carton. They’d decided to skip the plates and were handing the cartons back and forth. “April 1986.” “You seriously remember? That was a rhetorical question.” “Yes, because I had a bike accident later that month and I thought God was punishing me.” She’d been fourteen, and her liturgy class was reading Thomas Aquinas. Her doubts about the contradictions of Catholicism had been multiplying for some time, but when she realized Aquinas condoned early abortion, her faith crumbled. Now she turned in her shoulder to show Gabriel the fish-shaped scar. “I literally slammed into a brick wall.” “Did you go back to praying after your punishment?” Gabriel said. “No. I figured it was too late. I just moved my lips during Mass. But I have arthritis now in that shoulder, so I’m still being punished.” Once stars had joined the moon in a cobalt sky, they left for the mansion. Gabriel drove behind Maud along the grand drive that led from the farmhouse into a swamp of obscurity, the lines between trunk, branch, sky, and roof indistinct. They parked parallel on the lawn by the conservatory and turned on the high beams. Gabriel stood off to the side while Maud walked past the flagged beds, crouched down, stood up, squinted in the dark. And there, faint as an Etch A Sketch drawing, she made out a vague circle. A figure


Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton constable by name, a certain sir clifford constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's. In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities --spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan --and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are .. <p 449 > copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing --at least, what untattooed parts might remain --I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale. .. <p 449 > .. < chapter ciii 10 MEASUREMENT OF THE WHALE'S SKELETON > In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here. According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants. Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination? Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a


But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. "You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice. "But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more. "Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done, but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and


were necessary to her, and that she was necessary to them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havisham's before the time of her seclusion. In Mrs. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. The nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of familiarity without placing me on terms of favour, conduced to my distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she turned the very familiarity between herself and me, to the account of putting a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor relation - if I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband - I could not have seemed to myself, further from my hopes when I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by her name and hearing her call me by mine, became under the circumstances an aggravation of my trials; and while I think it likely that it almost maddened her other lovers, I know too certainly that it almost maddened me. She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer of every one who went near her; but there were more than enough of them without that. I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there were picnics, fete days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures, through which I pursued her - and they were all miseries to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death. Throughout this part of our intercourse - and it lasted, as will presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time - she habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that our association was forced upon us. There were other times when she would come to a sudden check in this tone and in all her many tones, and would seem to pity me. "Pip, Pip," she said one evening, coming to such a check, when we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond; "will you never take warning?" "Of what?" "Of me." "Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?" "Do I mean! If you don't know what I mean, you are blind." I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind, but for the reason that I always was restrained - and this was not the least of my miseries - by a feeling that it was ungenerous to press myself upon her, when she knew that she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My dread always was, that this knowledge on her part laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and made me the subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom. "At


pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. "We had such a good chance," he said. "I told him what I thought, but I couldn't in truth say that we had more than a good chance. I guess Tom was tired of white men's chances and preferred to take his own. Ready, Cal?" "Yessir, Mr. Finch." "Then let's go." Aunt Alexandra sat down in Calpurnia's chair and put her hands to her face. She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she would faint. I heard Miss Maudie breathing as if she had just climbed the steps, and in the diningroom the ladies chattered happily. I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from her face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, and her voice was flat. "I can't say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he's my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end." Her voice rose: "It tears him to pieces. He doesn't show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I've seen him when- what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else?" "What does who want, Alexandra?" Miss Maudie asked. "I mean this town. They're perfectly willing to let him do what they're too afraid to do themselves- it might lose 'em a nickel. They're perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what they're afraid to do, they're-" "Be quiet, they'll hear you," said Miss Maudie. "Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple." "Who?" Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew. "The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am l." Miss Maudie's old crispness was returning: "The handful of people in this town with background, that's who they are." Had I been attentive, I would have had another scrap to add to Jem's definition of background, but I found myself shaking and couldn't stop. I had seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Atticus had pointed out the exercise yard to me. It was the size of a football field. "Stop that shaking," commanded Miss Maudie, and I stopped. "Get up, Alexandra, we've left 'em long enough." Aunt Alexandra rose and smoothed the various whalebone ridges along her hips. She took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped her nose. She patted her hair and said, "Do I show it?" "Not a sign," said Miss Maudie. "Are you together again, Jean Louise?" "Yes ma'am." "Then let's join the ladies," she said grimly. Their voices swelled when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom. Aunt Alexandra was ahead of me, and I saw


ride home. After four years of Hüran rule, the city still appeared Lacustrine, though the tents beyond its wall served as a strong reminder of the conquest. Furtia and Nayimathun landed near the High Perch. The stronghold bestrode a crag to the west, its sloping walls made tall and smooth. Oxen and horses, eagles and dragons pranced across its roofs, and a sun and moon gleamed on the doors, to be parted down the middle when they opened. The sheer mountains towered behind, offering an outlook worthy of the gods. Snow blew from the mountains, smoke from fires and bloomeries. Dumai climbed down. It was far colder here than on the other side of the Daprang – and darker, too, the sky already dull at noon. There were more horses here than Dumai had ever seen. Furtia growled at a mare, which snorted in fear. ‘I think I’ll wait here, to prevent a war between dragons and horses,’ Nikeya said, amused. ‘You can face the fearsome warlord, as your father’s diplomat.’ ‘I am no diplomat.’ Dumai reached for her pack. ‘Besides, I thought charm was your area.’ Nikeya glanced at her in surprise, then smiled a little. Kanifa dismounted. When they reached the steps to the High Perch, a group of palace guards in well-tooled leather strode to meet them. Horsehair tufted from their helmets. ‘Show us your hands,’ came a deep voice. ‘Are you Princess Dumai of Seiiki?’ Dyed wool swathed their faces, from their chins to below their eyes, which held no small amount of caution. This far north, people might have forgotten Seiiki; certainly she doubted they had met Seiikinese merchants, or heard Lacustrine with an accent like hers. ‘Yes. My father sends his respects to the Great Naïr,’ Dumai said. ‘May your hunts be rich in spoils, and your birds soar on the wind.’ She did as they asked. ‘Soldier, why do you conceal your faces?’ ‘The Great Naïr has been told of a sickness, carried by scaled beasts. Sickness can be spread through breath.’ ‘I have seen those beasts. They are burning crops and settlements, slaughtering without mercy.’ The wool hid his expression. ‘Princess Irebül is hunting in the Collar,’ he said. ‘You may join her.’ He held out a swatch of green wool. ‘You are asked to wear this in her presence.’ ‘What of the dragons?’ ‘They may follow.’ He noticed the alchemist. ‘Master Kiprun. The Great Naïr will be pleased to see you.’ ‘Why is every ruler so pleased to see me this year?’ he muttered. ‘Shall I expect the Deathless Queen next?’ Faced with stony looks, he sighed. ‘Yes, yes. All under the mountains to the Great Naïr, and so on.’ A carriage drawn by snow camels bore them to a meadow that separated the city from the peaks, thick with grass and powder. This was the Collar, a stretch of land kept clear for falling rock and snowslides. Fine tents had been pitched at its western edge, where servants had gralloched a deer and set about roasting it over a fire. Princess Irebül


looked to her for direction. This wasn’t a battle where he would be in his element; no, this was more like a memorial. She doubted he’d know what rules applied here. This was a mercy killing, and it would be carried out with dignity. Hardy spoke in a hushed voice. “Uh, Doc, how do we proceed here?” Viv held up a hand as if to say, “Give me a minute.” Major Vivian Leigh allowed her mind to imagine how this ship had once bustled with activity. Hundreds—thousands—of crew members going about their individual tasks, chatting among themselves, forming relationships … living their lives. Lives not so different from what had transpired on Hamilton, Jefferson, or Adams … Now, what was left of them lay sprawled here within this eerie silence, like specimens in oversized Petrie dishes. Row upon row of the suffering, each a testament to the horrors they had endured, continued to endure both individually and as a crew. Viv’s eyes brimmed with tears as she surveyed the scene, her mind wrestling with conflicting emotions. On one hand, she yearned to relieve the crew members from their torturous existence, to grant them release from the clutches of the alien nanites keeping them alive. Yet the thought of ending their lives, even to end their suffering, weighed heavy on her shoulders. With her team now by her side, Viv knew it was time to bring an end to this nightmare. She knelt beside one of the crew members, a woman. Her skin was musty colored with a slight sheen to it, like wet cement. Her body was emaciated, gossamer skin on bones. Viv wanted to offer the woman some level of comfort before giving the final decree. She reached for her, then hesitated. A modest platinum band lay upon the metal tray next to one hand. The flesh on her bony ring finger had been eaten away by time and decay. She picked up the ring, looked inside the band, and read the inscription. “I love you, Ann. David.” Viv blinked away more tears. Yes, the sadness of the situation was palpable, but she felt gratitude as well. She looked down at what was left of the crew member’s mostly eaten-away face. She was no longer just some nameless Lincoln crew member. This woman had a name. Viv gently repositioned the ring back on Ann’s finger. She brushed several strands of brittle, stark-white hair away from her neck. “Come look at this,” she said to Hardy. The ChronoBot moved closer, bent at the waist, “What am I looking at, Doc?” The Marines also approached, as if walking on eggshells; they stayed behind Hardy and peered down, quiet and respectful of the situation. “Here,” Viv said, pointing to a puncture wound that looked at least ten times the size of a normal needle-prick. “I believe this is where the nanites were injected.” “Sadistic assholes,” Grip said under his breath. She ignored the comment. “From what I saw the first time I was here, the aliens, the Liquilids, they targeted this area of the


for a week and got stuck for fifteen years." "But how did you get there in the first place then?" "Easy, I got a lift with a teaser." "A teaser?" "Yeah." "Er, what is ..." "A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them." "Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. "Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly pleased with himself. "Ford," insisted Arthur, "I don't know if this sounds like a silly question, but what am I doing here?" "Well you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth." "And what's happened to the Earth?" "Ah. It's been demolished." "Has it," said Arthur levelly. "Yes. It just boiled away into space." "Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that." Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind. "Yes, I can understand that," he said at last. "Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!" Ford sprang up. "Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently. "What?" "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking!" "Yes you are." "Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?" "You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear." "I beg your pardon?" asked Arthur, rather politely he thought. Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him. He wished there was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi underwear, the piles of Squornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of corn flakes. He couldn't, and he didn't feel safe. Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he could identify. He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves. "Shush!" said Ford. "Listen, it might be important." "Im ... important?" "It's the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T'annoy." "You mean that's how the Vogons talk?" "Listen!" "But I can't speak Vogon!" "You don't need to. Just put that fish in your ear." Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur's ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

at last. "Wow," Ron sighed, as the broomstick rolled onto Harry's bedspread. Even Harry, who knew nothing about the different brooms, thought it looked wonderful. Sleek and shiny, with a mahogany handle, it had a long tail of neat, straight twigs and Nimbus Two Thousand written in gold near the top. As seven o'clock drew nearer, Harry left the castle and set off in the dusk toward the Quidditch field. He'd never been inside the stadium before. Hundreds of seats were raised in stands around the field so that the spectators were high enough to see what was going on. At either end of the field were three golden poles with hoops on the end. They reminded Harry of the little plastic sticks Muggle children blew bubbles through, except that they were fifty feet high. Too eager to fly again to wait for Wood, Harry mounted his broomstick and kicked off from the ground. What a feeling -- he swooped in and out of the goal posts and then sped up and down the field. The Nimbus Two Thousand turned wherever he wanted at his lightest touch. "Hey, Potter, come down!" Oliver Wood had arrived. He was carrying a large wooden crate under his arm. Harry landed next to him. "Very nice," said Wood, his eyes glinting. "I see what McGonagall meant...you really are a natural. I'm just going to teach you the rules this evening, then you'll be joining team practice three times a week." He opened the crate. Inside were four different-sized balls. "Right," said Wood. "Now, Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it's not too easy to play. There are seven players on each side. Three of them are called Chasers." "Three Chasers," Harry repeated, as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a soccer ball. "This ball's called the Quaffle," said Wood. "The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. Follow me?" "The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score," Harry recited. "So -- that's sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn't it?" "What's basketball?" said Wood curiously. "Never mind," said Harry quickly. "Now, there's another player on each side who's called the Keeper -- I'm Keeper for Gryffindor. I have to fly around our hoops and stop the other team from scoring." "Three Chasers, one Keeper," said Harry, who was determined to remember it all. "And they play with the Quaffle. Okay, got that. So what are they for?" He pointed at the three balls left inside the box. "I'll show you now," said Wood. "Take this." He handed Harry a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat. "I'm going to show you what the Bludgers do," Wood said. "These two are the Bludgers." He showed Harry two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle. Harry noticed that they seemed to


"For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one, for now you have seen her and know her."     "Yes, sir."     "She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?"     "Yes, sir."     "A strapper a real strapper, Jane; big brown and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there's Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket."     "As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerily: "Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise; I rose at four to see him off."       |Go to Contents |               Chapter XXI     PRESENTIMENTS are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly-estranged relatives; asserting, notwithstanding their alienation the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.     When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one's self or one's kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the death-bed of her little sister.     Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn; or again, dabbling its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next; now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven, successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.     I did not like this iteration of one idea this strange recurrence of one image; and I grew nervous


too hard. You don’t eat enough.” I want to vomit. I can’t stay a moment longer among these people. I need to break free from their smiles, their kindness. “Excuse me, Mr. Lee.” I stand up and hurry across the room. “I have to go,” I tell Susan. “I need to—uh, I forgot I have to pick up my mom at the airport.” I know it’s an awful excuse the moment I blurt it out—Susan knows I don’t have a car, that’s the reason she had to come pick me up at the train station in the first place. But she seems sympathetic. “Of course. You can’t keep your mother waiting. Just let me get my purse, and I’ll drive you to the station.” “No, please, I couldn’t impose. I’ll get an Uber—” “Absolutely not! Rosslyn is so far!” “I really don’t want to put you out of the way,” I gasp. “You haven’t finished your dinner. I had a lovely time, and it was so great meeting everyone, but I—um, I should really just let you enjoy your night.” I burst for the door before Susan can answer. She doesn’t chase after me, but if she had, I would have sprinted until I was out of sight. It’s so undignified, but all I can perceive then is the relief of cool air on my face outside. Ten AFTER THAT, I ASK EMILY TO DECLINE MOST EVENT INVITATIONS on my behalf. I’m done with schools, bookstores, and book clubs. I’m selling at the level where personal appearances aren’t going to move the needle on sales, so I don’t need to keep exposing myself as bait for further controversy. The only events I keep attending are awards ceremonies at literary conventions, because as much as I now want to hide from the public, I’d hate to give up the rush of validation from those. Awards in this industry are very silly and arbitrary, less a marker of prestige or literary quality and more an indication that you’ve won a popularity contest with a very small, skewed group of voters. Awards don’t matter—at least, I am told this constantly by the people who regularly win them. Athena made an annual point to explain all this on Twitter, always right after she was nominated for something big: Oh, of course I’m so honored, but remember, if you weren’t a finalist, that doesn’t mean your work doesn’t matter! All of our stories are special in their own, important ways. I do fully believe that awards are bullshit, but that doesn’t make me want to win them any less. And The Last Front is, simply put, awards bait. It’s brilliantly written—check. It attracts both commercial and “upmarket” readers—check. But most important, it is about something; some timely or sensitive issue that the awards committees can point to and say, Look, we care about what is going on in the world, and since literature is a necessary reflection of our lived reality, this story is what we’ve chosen to elevate. I’m a bit nervous that The Last Front


like the way the wind was blowing. “Ladies, please...” “I’ll wring your necks, all of your necks,” exclaimed Mrs. Bone. “I’ve been up since four o’clock this morning throwing out the slops, spit-polishing the utensils, scrubbing Cook’s undies...” The Janes pedaled madly, hurtling around the edge of the boating lake. “I hope I’m not going to miss my dinner,” said Hephzibah with an enormous sigh. Winnie felt her patience start to snap. “Of course you won’t.” “You say that, but it’s past teatime already.” “Ladies, let’s move on,” said Winnie. “Move on? I can’t think when I’m this famished.” “Then go and sing for your supper,” said Winnie, rounding on her. “Or whatever it is you do to pay for your subsistence.” “I pay for my subsistence with my talent,” said Hephzibah. “A rare talent, as well you know!” Winnie’s forbearance reached the end of its limits. She couldn’t help herself. “A rare talent? Hardly. We all know how your sort of actress makes her living. Oldest profession in the book.” The Janes stopped pedaling. The boat slowed, careening toward the bank. Mrs. Bone’s eyebrows shot up. Alice’s glance flashed sideways, and Mrs. King frowned. Hephzibah’s expression cracked open, color racing up her neck, exposed. “Well, now,” said Mrs. Bone. “Fancy that.” The women studied Hephzibah. Winnie felt her skin growing suddenly warm. “I...” she began. As the Janes steered the boat to the riverbank, Mrs. King’s voice cut through the air. “Winnie,” she said. “Get out.” Shame rose within her. “Hephzibah...” “Out,” said Mrs. King again. “You know the rules. If you need to make someone feel small, so that you can feel tall...” Mrs. Bone recited the rest. “Then, my goodness, my dear, you’re no person at all. Quite right. I taught you that myself. You should all listen to that, my girls.” Winnie rose from the boat. It rocked dangerously beneath her. It would have been better if she had fallen in the water. 20 The night before the ball 10:00 p.m. Shepherd had left orders for everyone to get to bed early, in anticipation of the ball. Hurry up, hurry up, Mrs. Bone thought, urging the house to go to sleep. Her first tranche of men were coming in tonight, an advance guard, ready for the main action. They’d be winched up to the roof, fully installed in the attics by dawn, their movements padded by Winnie’s Turkish carpets. She glanced at the ceiling and imagined how it would smell, forty men crouched and waiting: sweaty feet, the air thick with whisky, piss warming gently in buckets. She would have gone up there herself, if only they didn’t lock the doors at night. Mrs. Bone liked to inspect her troops before battle. It gave them a good kick. Sue was at the washbasin, picking dirt out of her nails. She did this in secret, when she assumed Mrs. Bone wasn’t looking, as if a little coal was something of which to be ashamed. “Hurry along, Sue,” Mrs. Bone said for the third time. “It’s hot,” whispered Sue. She


breakfast and work with Dickon and then afterward--I believe--I'll go to see him." She thought it was the middle of the night when she was awakened by such dreadful sounds that she jumped out of bed in an instant. What was it--what was it? The next minute she felt quite sure she knew. Doors were opened and shut and there were hurrying feet in the corridors and some one was crying and screaming at the same time, screaming and crying in a horrible way. "It's Colin," she said. "He's having one of those tantrums the nurse called hysterics. How awful it sounds." As she listened to the sobbing screams she did not wonder that people were so frightened that they gave him his own way in everything rather than hear them. She put her hands over her ears and felt sick and shivering. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she kept saying. "I can't bear it." Once she wondered if he would stop if she dared go to him and then she remembered how he had driven her out of the room and thought that perhaps the sight of her might make him worse. Even when she pressed her hands more tightly over her ears she could not keep the awful sounds out. She hated them so and was so terrified by them that suddenly they began to make her angry and she felt as if she should like to fly into a tantrum herself and frighten him as he was frightening her. She was not used to any one's tempers but her own. She took her hands from her ears and sprang up and stamped her foot. "He ought to be stopped! Somebody ought to make him stop! Somebody ought to beat him!" she cried out. Just then she heard feet almost running down the corridor and her door opened and the nurse came in. She was not laughing now by any means. She even looked rather pale. "He's worked himself into hysterics," she said in a great hurry. "He'll do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try, like a good child. He likes you." "He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping her foot with excitement. The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the bed-clothes. "That's right," she said. "You're in the right humor. You go and scold him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever you can." It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself. She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the


Oh, Marilla, I'm so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard." Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla's heart at touch of that thin little hand in her own-a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral. "If you'll be a good girl you'll always be happy, Anne. And you should never find it hard to say your prayers." "Saying one's prayers isn't exactly the same thing as praying," said Anne meditatively. "But I'm going to imagine that I'm the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I'll imagine I'm gently waving down here in the ferns-and then I'll fly over to Mrs. Lynde's garden and set the flowers dancing-and then I'll go with one great swoop over the clover field-and then I'll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there's so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I'll not talk any more just now, Marilla." "Thanks by to goodness for that," breathed Marilla in devout relief. 11. Anne's Impressions of Sunday-School "Well, how do you like them?" said Marilla. Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store. She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike-plain skirts fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and tight as sleeves could be. "I'll imagine that I like them," said Anne soberly. "I don't want you to imagine it," said Marilla, offended. "Oh, I can see you don't like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren't they neat and clean and new?" "Yes." "Then why don't you like them?" "They're-they're not-pretty," said Anne reluctantly. "Pretty!" Marilla sniffed. "I didn't trouble my head about getting pretty dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I'll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they're all you'll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I'll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most anything after those skimpy wincey things you've been wearing." "Oh, I AM grateful," protested Anne. "But I'd be ever so much gratefuller if-if you'd made just one of them with


tries his usual tactics, Nick will think Andy’s dismissing whatever’s upsetting him. He plainly doesn’t want to visit his mother—the mother he’s hardly ever mentioned—or isn’t delighted to have Andy tagging along with him, and both of these topics seem potentially dangerous, so he needs to step carefully. “Do you want to tell me why all the plants are withering as we walk past?” Andy asks mildly as they turn onto a side street. “And why all the animals are running away from you? I mean, you don’t have to, but it’s an option.” Nick snorts. “Just grouchy.” “Yeah, yeah. Likely story.” He nudges Nick with his shoulder and Nick nudges him back. * * * “Here we are.” Nick stops in front of a small white house. “You hold this.” He passes Andy the parcel of meat as they climb the steps. He holds up his fist as if to knock, then apparently thinks better of it and opens the door. “Mama!” he calls. “Nicky!” comes a shout from inside the house, and then Nick is being hugged by a tiny round woman with salt-and-pepper hair. “Too skinny,” she says, looking him up and down. She turns her attention to Andy. “Mama, this is Andy. I told you about him. We work together.” Not sure what else to do, Andy holds out the meat. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Russo. Happy birthday!” Nick’s mother shouts something in Italian over her shoulder and two small children come racing through the house, although how they’re managing to pick up that kind of speed in such a small space, Andy can’t fathom. In a sitting room, a couple of men sit in front of the television. “Christ, Nicky,” says one of them, a dark-haired man who looks startlingly like Nick but maybe ten years older. “Nice of you to show your face around here. Who’s your friend?” Beside Andy, Nick goes rigid. “Andy, this is my brother Michael.” Then he turns to his brother. “I just saw Chrissy and Danielle. Is Sal here? Where’s Bev?” Michael ignores Andy and looks Nick over, radiating disapproval, although Andy can’t imagine at what—Nick’s wearing the navy crewneck sweater that Andy got him for Christmas and a pair of wool trousers. “Bev’s in the kitchen,” Nick’s brother finally says. “And Sal’s with her.” There’s something about the man’s tone that makes Andy think that Sal, whoever that is, shouldn’t be in the kitchen. It also makes Andy think that if this is how Nick’s brother usually acts, it’s no wonder Nick doesn’t enjoy coming home. But what does Andy know? He doesn’t have siblings. He really doesn’t have any experience with family whatsoever. Nick introduces Andy to two old women and one very old woman, all dressed in black. They’re apparently aunts, or something like aunts, and before Andy can figure out how there could be any doubt on that score, Nick is gone, and Andy’s left behind, attempting to have a conversation with three women who apparently don’t speak English. One of them hands him a glass