Dobryna

“ I have followed the plan of explaining all I could to my men on board the Dobryna and no inconvenience has arisen.”
“Well, then, so let it be,” said the captain; adding, “It is not likely that these Spaniards are so ignorant as not to have noticed the change in the length of the days; neither can they be unaware of the physical changes that have transpired. They shall certainly be told that we are being carried away into unknown regions of space, and that this island is nearly all that remains of the Old World.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Ben Zoof, aloud ”

“ Do not complain,” a low voice said. “All will yet be well.”
“How can all be well,” wept poor Dobrunka, “when I have no eyes and no feet and no hands? I shall never again see the bright sun and the green woods. I shall never again hold in my arms my beloved Dobromil. Nor shall I be able to spin fine flax for his shirts! Oh, what did I ever do to you, wicked mother, or to you, cruel sister, that you have done this to me?”
The hermit went to the entrance of the cave and called three times. ”

“ Zloboha was in a quandary. She wanted the golden spindle, for it was very beautiful. It would go well with the spinning wheel and would be something to be proud of. Yet she didn’t want to be left without anything that had belonged to Dobrunka.
“But really, mother,” she whined, “I don’t see why I have to keep something of Dobrunka’s so that Dobromil will love me as he loved her. I’m sure I’m as pretty as Dobrunka ever was.”
“Well,” said the old woman, “it would be better if you kept them. I’ve often heard that’s a good way to guard a man’s love. However, do as you like.” ”

“ She often went to the birch wood in the hope of seeing the maiden again. But she never did.
THE GOLDEN SPINNING WHEEL THE STORY OF KING DOBROMIL AND THE GOOD DOBRUNKA
[Pg 179]
THE GOLDEN SPINNING WHEEL
THERE was once a poor woman who had twin daughters. The girls were exactly alike in face and feature but utterly different in disposition. Dobrunka was kind, industrious, obedient, and everything a good girl ought to be. Zloboha, her sister, was spiteful, disobedient, lazy, and proud. In fact, she had just about as many faults as a person could have. ”

“ She handed her yarn to her mother and went back to the cottage. Then when she had put the kitchen in order, she sat down to her wheel and began to spin. Dobrunka had a pretty voice, as pretty as any of the song-birds in the forest, and always when she was alone she sang. So today as she sat spinning she sang all the songs she knew, one after the other.
Suddenly she heard outside the trample of a horse. “Some one is coming,” she thought to herself, “someone who has lost his way in the woods. ”

“ The longer Zloboha looked at the spinning wheel the more beautiful it seemed to her and the more she wanted it. Suddenly she remembered Dobrunka’s eyes that she had hidden away.
“Mother,” she said, “as a queen I ought to have something no one else has. When the king comes home he will want me to spin, and just think how lovely I should look sitting at this golden wheel. Now we’ve got those eyes of Dobrunka’s. Let us exchange them for the golden spinning wheel. We’ll still have the hands and feet.” ”

“ Dobrunka worked with a good will, and took reproaches and blows with the gentleness of a lamb; but nothing soothed her stepmother, for every day added to the beauty of the elder sister and the ugliness of the younger. "They are growing up," thought the mother, "and suitors will soon appear who will refuse my daughter when they see this hateful Dobrunka, who grows beautiful on purpose to spite me. I must get rid of her, cost what it may."
One day in the middle of January, Katinka took a fancy for some violets. ”

“ He was not dead, but quite unconscious. They put a mattress on the study-table, and laid him on it.
He had been riding home from the funeral. Whether Dobbin, usually so sure-footed and steady, had plunged his foot into a rut, just glazed over by the ice, and so had stumbled; or whether something had startled him and caused him to swerve, we never knew. The Rector had been thrown violently, his head striking the stones. ”

“ The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a nun, and make a stew against any wife in the contrada. Dowry, dowry! What did such a girl as that want with a dowry? She was her own dowry, by Bacchus the Thracian. Look at the shape of her—was that not a dowry? ”

“ One morning, then, the Admiral came into the office, looked long and attentively at Doffen, and finally said:
"What's the matter with you, man? You're getting to look like a plucked goose, for all the sign of life in you!" And he jumped up on his stool.
"It's a dog's life being a man," declared Doffen sententiously.
"You find it easier, no doubt, to be a monkey," said the Admiral.
"Well, anyway, I'd be a sort of relative of yours," said Doffen. "And it's as well to be on good terms with the devil, they say." ”

“ Daubeney, wanting whom all her efforts must have been wasted, for whether she love him or not a woman needs a man in love with her at hand to be at her best—Dobbin was fairly dazzled, not so much by charms of person never more witching as by gay spirits the gayer for this sudden indulgence after long inhibition, by delicate audacity, wit swift, mutable and pungent, and passages of sheer bravura in Lucinda's exposition of the arts of coquetry. ”

“ Dobrunka did not even know that she was pretty, and she could not understand why her stepmother flew into a rage at the mere [265] sight of her. The poor child was obliged to do all the work of the house; she had to sweep, cook, wash, sew, spin, weave, cut the grass, and take care of the cow, while Katinka lived like a princess, that is to say, did nothing. ”

“ As Claire stepped out into the cold sunlight of early November, she smiled bitterly at the exaggeration of last night's mood. After the first hectic flush of dawn there is nothing so sane and sweet and commonplace as morning. The spectacle of Mrs. Finnegan, who lodged in the flat below, slopping warm suds over the thin marble steps, added a final note of homeliness, which divorced Claire completely from heroics.
"Well, Miss Robson, so you really got home, last night," broke from the industrious neighbor as she straightened up and tucked her lifted skirts in more securely. ”

“ In a few moments the torpidity disappeared, and soul and life returned into the body. The maiden wondered at the handsome youth who was near her; and the rejoiced dwarfs considered the wonder-worker as a very angel from heaven. Godfrey told the restored one who he was, and she informed him of her fate, and of the persecutions of her cruel stepmother. “You will not,” said Godfrey, “escape the efforts of the poisoner if you do not follow my counsel. Abide still, a short time, in this grave, that it may not be rumoured about that you live. ”

“ There came a day, a bright, frosty day in December, when both the young ladies were in the kitchen helping Penelope with the mince-meat for Christmas pics, and Godfrey had his sum to do in the parlour by himself. Outside the sun was shining. There had been a little sprinkling of snow the day before and a sharp frost at night, and all the garden was white and sparkling like the ice on a sugared cake, while the bare trees shone like fairy land. Godfrey's eyes would not keep on the grey figures and the black slate. ”

“ Dorcon was the first to speak.
"I," he said, "am taller than Daphnis. I keep oxen, whilst he keeps goats; and just as an ox is more valuable than a goat, so is a herdsman, like myself, superior to a goat-herd. My skin is as white as milk, my hair as golden as ripe wheat; I am as fresh as the leaves in spring. And no wonder, for it was my own mother, not an animal, that suckled me when I was a babe. Daphnis is short and puny, with no more beard than a woman, whilst his body is as tawny as a wolf's skin. By living, too, among his goats, he has contracted a goatish smell. ”

“ For the next few days there was no fault to find with the way Godfrey's lessons were learnt, and he watched for every chance of pleasing Angelica, as if he were really afraid of her heart cracking, as Betty had suggested it might. The weather was cold and frosty now, and the two young aunts were much disturbed at the idea of Godfrey's first winter in a northern climate. Angel consulted with Penny and Martha, and stitched away diligently to provide the necessary warm clothes, and he certainly looked much stronger already than when he had first come to Oakfield. ”

“ It is not sufficient to be floored with such heavy slabs of historical information as those by which we learn that the name of Dover has been arrived at through a long series of British, Roman, and Saxon forms, originating from the little stream called anciently the Dour, that flowed, once upon a time, through the chalk valley of Temple Ewell and Buckland, tinkling cheerfully through the old town and falling into the waves over the pebbles of Dover beach ”

“ Dorothea did not question his assertion, as he perhaps expected.
"Perhaps not, if either could enter into the other's feelings." Dorothea thought of Mervyn's words in the Park. "Don't misunderstand me," he added, "I am not complaining of Mervyn. It is of myself that I complain."
"Isn't that the first step towards a change?"
"No. The difficulty is in our temperaments. He is all sunshine and merriment, hardly able to look at anything seriously for five minutes together. I am—" and a pause. "Hardly necessary to tell you. I have no sparkle or lightness in my composition. Sometimes I wish I had. ”

“ If Claud had not already been Daphne’s, that grateful smile of hers would have enslaved him.
So Doris was told that though no cats could be tailored from such a sky as that, life still held delights that rain could not spoil—and with a little rustle and fuss of preparation they went.
Daphne banged down the trap-door, threw herself on her bed, and thought. At least, she did not think— she surrendered herself to the physical memory of that moment when he had held her in his arm—the moment that went before she liked less. She would not look at it. ”

“ When Dorothea first came to Craye, she liked Mervyn, and she knew that she could like him very much more. The potential had now become the positive. Dorothea not only liked him very much more, but she felt that for her, he stood alone as the man who was unlike all other men. This means something far beyond mere liking; yet for Dolly's sake Dorothea strove hard to hide what she felt, to treat him as a mere acquaintance. ”

“ But it was necessary to make a start. Godfrey felt the responsibility which rested on him, on him alone, for he could in no way depend on his companion. In that empty box which served the professor for a cranium there could be born no practical idea; Godfrey would have to think, contrive, and decide for both.
His first thought was for Phina, his betrothed, whom he had so stupidly refused to make his wife; his second for his Uncle Will, whom he had so imprudently left, and then turning to Tartlet,—
"To vary our ordinary," he said, "here are some shell-fish and half a dozen eggs." ”

“ WHEN Daphne promised to sit for the sketch club (in that white and gold gown) Doris had, for the moment, been forgotten. A pang of remorse pierced sharply the elder sister’s heart when she had closed the door on that comb-playing company and found herself alone with the bare attic, and the soft regular breathing of the sleeping Dormouse.
“Life is very difficult,” she told herself, standing rigid in her gold and white and the spacious bareness of her kingdom. “If the Dormouse is going to feel like a hindrance—that means there’s something wrong.” ”

“ She orders her attendant to bring out to the face of heaven the ashes of these herbs, and [Errata: dele and] to cast them over her head into the running stream, and at the same time taking care not to look behind her. After all her efforts the sorceress begins to despair. She says, "Daphnis heeds not my incantations, heeds not the Gods." She looks again; she perceives the ashes on the altar emit sparkles of fire; she hears her faithful house-dog bark before the door; she says, "Can these things be; or do lovers dream what they desire? It is not so! The real Daphnis comes ”

“ The only apparent method of hurting him was to attack him from the outside—bust the puzzle business, and drive him into bankruptcy. But he hadn't been with us a month before he launched "Dobbin, Dobbin, Oh, Where's Dobbin?" and successfully maddened a continent for a second time. I gave papa one of the dollar sizes as a birthday present, but he didn't see any joke in it, and got blacker than a thundercloud. He was sorer than ever about losing the Vincents, and never passed the Howard place without gritting his teeth.
We all waited for Marsden to come out and startle us. ”

“ Joslinn of your finding him, and of his being here,” said Forrester. “Now he is ready to talk.”
Dorothy greeted him and began the talk, while I wrote feverishly as Joslinn spoke in a low steady tone. Yes, he had gone out fishing. He had left a little shooting box, whither he had run down alone on Monday, and taken the knockabout out. The reason no one had known of his disappearance was that there was no one to care. He had no family and had retired from business, made little trips now and then, so his landlady and friends simply thought of him as away. ”