Brie

“ Brier looked up to find a mild-eyed dove waving its white wings beside her, as it cooed these gentle words; and, before the fairy could answer, came other little voices from the tree above her head, calling: "Come up! come up, mamma! and bring the wonderful elf. We cannot fly and we cannot wait; come soon, else we shall fall out with trying to see."
With that Brier heard a flapping of wings, a rustling of leaves, and saw two small heads peering over the edge of a nest, with eyes full of eager delight. ”

“ One night when Gracie bade her good-night and danced away, she looked after her with the old, wistful wonder in her eyes, and then looked up at Mrs. Brierly.
"How beautiful God can make children, ma'am. I think they'll all be so, in the true country." Then reaching forward she took Mrs. Brierly's hand and touched it for the first time with her humble, grateful lips. ”

“ Many of the boys in Blackrock school would have found a difficulty in stating the exact grounds of their regard for Mrs. Brier. To some of them she was a comparative stranger; they could not trace one direct act in which they were indebted to her. ”

“ An opportunity to distinguish myself and force the people in Paris to pay attention to me.
LUCIE. Yes; you’ve been waiting for that opportunity for eleven years.
BRIGNAC. Obviously then it is so much the nearer.
LUCIE. And what will it be?
BRIGNAC. Some conflict, some incident—trouble.
LUCIE. Trouble at Châteauneuf?
BRIGNAC. I’m quite aware that Châteauneuf is most confoundedly peaceable. One gets no chance. I count more upon Balureau than on anything else. [Pause] Is Annette with her friend Gabrielle?
LUCIE. No.
BRIGNAC. But this is Tuesday.
LUCIE. It’s not time for her to go yet. ”

“ You would not have believed that the man who walked so quietly along the greensward with the moonlight on his face, could have been the same person who stood on [112] the deck of that brig and superintended the number of lashes that should be dealt on the back of a human being. Once or twice, as his glance fell on some familiar object, a sweet brier bush, perhaps, or a cluster of tall mulleins that had grown by the footpath since he was a child, his eyes would fill with tears. There was something holy and homelike in the stillness that made a child of this cruel man. ”

“ Rose had been asleep for the last hundred years, and with her slept the King, Queen, and all her courtiers. He knew also, from his grandfather, that many princes had already come and sought to pierce through the briar hedge, and had remained caught in it and died a sad death. Then the young Prince said, ‘I am not afraid; I am determined to go and look upon the lovely Briar Rose.’
The young Prince said. ‘I am not afraid; I am determined to go and look upon the lovely Briar Rose.’
The good old man did all in his power to dissuade him, but the Prince would not listen to his words. ”

“ Bray gave the true directions, and without hesitation.
“Is this child the one she stole from the Briar-street mission on Christmas day?” asked Edith.
“He is,” answered Mrs. Bray.
“How shall I know he is mine? What proof is there that little Andy, as he is called, and my baby are the same?”
“I know him to be your child, for I have never lost sight of him,” replied the woman, emphatically. “You may know him by his eyes and mouth and chin, for they are yours. Nobody can mistake the likeness. But there is another proof. ”

“ René. Well, Thérèse, they won't come to our wedding.
Thérèse. They still refuse their consent?
René. We can do without it.
Thérèse. But they refuse it?
René. Yes. Forgive me, my dearest, for asking you to take just my own self. Do you love me enough to marry me quite simply, without any relations, since I leave my relations for your sake?
Thérèse. My dear, we mustn't do that; we must wait.
René. No, I won't wait. I won't lose the best time of my life, and years of happiness, for the sake of prejudices I don't believe in. Do you remember what you said to me the night we played Barberine? ”

“ Brigid’s eyes twinkled. Elbow on knee, chin in cupped hand, she cast a side-long look at Mary. “And will you be recording that small speech at confession.”
Mary flushed. “I do not understand,” she responded.
“No?” quizzed Brigid. “Oh, Mary, methought you were a truthful woman. And here within the space of one minute you have twice—Oh, fie upon you!”
Mary, her lips folded upon each other, stitched at her embroidery.
“I wonder,” mused Brigid, unheeding her companion’s silence, “just what our dear mistress intends.” ”

“ Briss, "at all. I described to you," she triumphantly set forth, "the effect of it—which is a very different thing."
I could only meet her with admiration. "You're of an astuteness⸻!"
"Of course I'm of an astuteness! I see effects. And I saw that one. How much Briss himself had seen it is, as I've told you, another matter; and what he had, at any rate, quite taken the affair for was the sort of flirtation in which, if one is a friend to either party, and one's own feelings are not at stake, one may now and then give people a lift. ”

“ Irene, I BLUBBERED!
His manner altered in an instant—I could see that much through my fingers and hair. He dropped on one knee beside me, parted the tangle of hair, and said, in the tenderest way: My poor girl, God knows I have not intended to pain you. How should I?—I who love you—I who have loved you for—for years and years! ”

“ Berry, but Mr. Lygon wants no assurance that he is welcome.”
“Then he shall take wine with me,” said Mr. Berry. “Your health, Arthur, and the missus’s, and yours, Miss Clara, and may you make as pretty and good a woman as mamma.”
“As good and as pretty, I should have said,” observed Mrs. Berry, “if it had been necessary to say anything about prettiness at all. May you be a good girl, Clara, as far as any of us can be said to be good, and never mind about the looks.” ”

“ I perceive that you have as much to learn as myself. Mr. Berry has not taken you into further confidence than he has given to me. Pardon my excitement. I have been exceedingly ill, and my nerves are not steady. I must try a course of walks in your Lipthwaite air, and see what that will do for me.”
“Arthur Lygon,” said Mrs. Berry, “it is impossible for me, with any poor words I may possess, to tell you how my heart bleeds for you. What you have just said about Mr. Berry, and about his withholding confidence from me is, I grieve to assure you, utterly beside the mark. ”

“ Bray had no collateral relations of his name after the death of his uncle and brothers within many generations. His ancestor, Sir Edward Bray, was the heir male of Edmund, Lord Bray, and succeeded to the family estates; but the title descended to Lord Bray’s daughters, and was in abeyance until obtained by the late Baroness Bray. Mr. Bray was one of the few descendants then living of Sir Thomas More, whose granddaughter, the daughter of Margaret Roper, married Sir Edward Bray. His two daughters, Mary and Catherine, were not married.
[32a] He was now getting into the society of literary men. ”

“ The square foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair
and looked down the brae.
Ah, that brae! The history of tragic little Thrums is sunk into it like the stones it swallows in the winter. We have all found the brae long and steep in the spring of life. Do you remember how the child you once were sat at the foot of it and wondered if a new world began at the top? It climbs from a shallow burn, and we used to sit on the brig a long time before venturing to climb. As boys we ran up the brae. As men and women, young and in our prime, we almost forgot that it was there. ”

“ Under these circumstances the family at Rosehill pressed her to make their home permanently hers, and for about a year, from 1850 to 1851, she became the member of a household in fullest sympathy with her. Here Mr. Bray's many-sided mental activity and genial brightness of disposition, and his wife's exquisite goodness of heart, must have helped to soothe and cheer one whose delicately strung nature was just then nearly bending under the excessive strain of thought and feeling she had gone through. ”

“ The tune lifted, lifted, the light shone; and it seemed to Miss Brill that in another moment all of them, all the whole company, would begin singing. The young ones, the laughing ones who were moving together, they would begin, and the men’s voices, very resolute and brave, would join them. And then she too, she too, and the others on the benches—they would come in with a kind of accompaniment—something low, that scarcely rose or fell, something so beautiful—moving. . . . And Miss Brill’s eyes filled with tears and she looked smiling at all the other members of the company. ”

“ We have dreamed, my Brigit, through the last few months, and now we must awaken. You must marry Théo, and he will take you away for a few months, and when you come back as his—wife, I shall—I will have learned to love you in the only way I can love you without shame—as my daughter. ”

“ When the magician saw that miracle, he said to Brigid, “You shall have all the butter for yourself, and the twelve cows which you have milked shall be yours also.” Brigid said, “Keep your cows, and give me my mother’s freedom.” The magician answered, “The cows and the butter and your mother are yours.” Then he believed in Christ and was baptized, and Brigid gave all his gifts to the poor, and returned to Dubtach with her mother. Her father offered to sell her to the king, saying that he wished to get rid of her because she gave to the poor everything she could lay her hands upon. ”

“ Thérèse. You've so impressed it upon women that they're inferior to men, that they've ended by believing it.
Girard. Well, maybe there's exceptions, but it's true in the main.
Deschaume. Let 'em stay at home, I says, and cook the bloomin' dinner.
Berthe. And what'll they cook the days when you spend all your wages in booze.
Girard. It's the people that started you working that you ought to curse.
Berthe. I like that! It was my husband himself that brought me to the workshop.
Thérèse. She's not the only one, eh, Vincent? ”

“ Brigid looked straight before her. “Sooner feel too deeply than have a heart of stone. Mary, I’d sooner be dumb than lure men by the syren’s song. I’d sooner be featureless with leprosy than drive men mad by the fairness of my face. She is heartless as a stone image, remorseless as a Medusa, a very vampire to—.” Brigid broke off; a sidelong glance had shown her Mary’s face. “You are shocked? Small wonder. Truth is a very naked lady, and if we drag her from the bottom of her well we should at least garb her in becoming fashion. ”

“ And it was angels that baptized her and that gave her the name of Brigit, that is a Fiery Arrow. She grew up to be a serving girl the same as her mother. And all the food she used was the milk of a white red-eared cow that was set apart for her by a druid. And everything she put her hand to used to increase, and it was she wove the first piece of cloth in Ireland, and she put the white threads in the loom that have a power of healing in them to this day. She bettered the sheep and she satisfied the birds and she fed the poor. ”

“ The Drying of Brigit's Cloak One time Brennain, saint of the Gael, came from the west to Brigit, to the plain of the Life, for he wondered at the great name she had for doing miracles and wonders. And Brigit came in from her sheep to welcome him, and as she came into the house she laid her cloak that was wet on the rays of the sun, and they held it up the same as hooks. ”

“ Briss; but my renewed impression had suddenly made the difference. If that was the way he struck me, how might not, if I could get at her, she? And she might, after all, in the privacy at last offered us by empty rooms, be waiting for me. I went through them all, however, only to find them empty indeed. In conformity with the large allowances of every sort that were the law of Newmarch, they were still open and lighted, so that if I had believed in Mrs. Briss's reappearance I might conveniently, on the spot, have given her five minutes more. ”

“ While Brigid plied her knife and fork, she fell to studying her breviary, judging, and rightly, the girl would fare better deeming herself unwatched. Nevertheless her eyes were not wholly occupied with the book. What she saw in Brigid’s face caused her some perplexity, though her manner gave no inkling of it. It was seldom the Lady Abbess’s way to speak of what she saw; never on the instant. This gave time for seeing further, for weighing and for judging accurately. Thoughts surprised by another before they have come to full purpose have a way of taking sudden flight. ”

“ To this I agreed, and going to get a parasol heard the incautious woman remark behind me—
"Seems to be an old maid—a gaunt-lookin' old party—ain't got no complexion. I wonder was she ever going to be married. Don't look as if many would be breakin' their necks after her, does she?"
Mrs Bray posed as a champion of her sex, but could not open her mouth without belittling them. However, I was [27] too well seasoned in human nature to be disconcerted, and walked by her side enjoying her immensely, she was so delightfully, transparently patronising. ”

“ Berry sat down close to him and looked, shyly, into his face, trying to appear at ease, though her poor heart thumped wildly against her side, and the fitful color came and went, like a flag of distress, in her cheeks.
“Ah, you are getting on fast, sir!” she cried, with a slight tremor in her musical voice. “Your eyes seem quite strong to-day, and that blistering red skin is getting fairer. ”

“ In the eighth line Brigid is declared to be “Mariae sanctae similem,” an expression which may have given origin to the saying that Brigid was the “Mary of the Irish.” The following passage from the Leabhar Breac gives a glowing eulogy of St. Brigid, and formally calls her the “Mary of the Gaedhil.”
“There was not in the world one of more bashfulness and modesty than this holy virgin. She never washed (as was then not unfrequent,) her hands, or her feet, or head before men. She never looked a man in the face. She never spoke without blushing. ”