Mr. Smallweed

“ It’s her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman won’t sit down like a Christian,” says Mr. George with his eyes musingly fixed on Judy, “I can’t comprehend.”
“She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot” (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion) , “but I need attention, my dear friend.”
“Well!” returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. ”

“ We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don’t grow under his feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed’s only brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. ”

“ Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached by the oldest practitioners. ”

“ Going out early in life and marrying late, as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious- minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins. ”

“ It would be too delicious! not Merryweather! Don't ask me to believe it, Peggy, for it simply is beyond my powers. Not the Snowy's brother!"
"Yes, indeed!" said Peggy, laughing as she, too, leaned back over the stern. "Let me introduce you; Mr. Philip Merryweather, Miss Viola Vincent."
"Awfully glad!" said Phil, making a motion toward where his hat should have been. "I've often heard my sister speak of you, Miss Vincent."
"Oh! Mr. Merryweather, I adore the Snowy!" cried Viola. "She is simply the dearest creature on the face of the earth. ”

“ Sparrow, and yet with the same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and fifty.
"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?"
Miss Smalley did not mind that at all ”

“ On Donovan's assenting, Mr. Simcoe, the shy youth, had unfolded a tale of horror. He had come up for his dance with Miss Hadwell when she, without a word of apology, had piloted him in the direction of the stairs, murmuring, as she did so, "We don't want to dance, do we? We can do better than that." ”

“ Simpson says: ‘Perfanity,’ says he, ‘is the most useless sin of all sins. No gentleman swears.’ ”
Mrs. Ross snorted and turned her swarthy face toward her visitor.
“Livin’ in daily intercourse with an educated young man has its advantages. Look what Mr. Simpson has done for our Tom. Look at him, Bill Paisley, and tell me, don’t you see a difference in that boy?”
“I do,” said Bill slowly; “I sure do, widder, now you speak about it.”
“That young man of education did it,” said the widow. “The teacher did it all.” ”

“ Stillwood, without salary, the idea being that I should study for the law.
“You are in luck's way, my boy, in luck's way,” old Mr. Gadley had assured me. “To have commenced your career in the office of Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal will be a passport for you anywhere. It will stamp you, my boy.”
Mr. Stillwood himself was an extremely old and feeble gentleman—so old and feeble it seemed strange that he, a wealthy man, had not long ago retired.
“I am always meaning to,” he explained to me one day soon after my advent in his office. ”

“ I'm getting it steady for him.”
“A thing it will take you some time to accomplish, eh? A mount like that is not to be had for nothing, every day, is it?”
“Ya'as, you're about right there, Mr. Lawless; you're down to every move, I see, as usual. Any orders to-day, gents? your two vests will be home to-morrow, Mr. Coleman.”
“Here, Smithson, wait a moment,” said Cumberland, drawing him on one side; “I was deucedly unlucky with the balls this morning,” continued he in a lower tone, “can you let me have five-and-twenty pounds?”
“What you please, sir,” replied Smithson, bowing. ”

“ You will have acquired a love for your business, and, active as you are, you will not be able to do without it.”
“You think me at the end of my confession. The worst is to come. Mr. Smithson is polite and sincere, but reserved and ceremonious, like all Englishmen. He keeps me at a distance, and appears as if my errors and loss of property, which of course he is aware of, gave him some superiority over me. ”

“ Udo's enemy had got away, and that St. Udo would never be avenged now!—until the compassionate vicar supported her to her carriage and got her driven to the castle.
So Mrs. Chetwode put her to bed, and nursed her, and wept over her, and got her to sleep at last; and she did not awake for at least twelve hours.
Next day Mr. Emersham sent up his card to Miss Walsingham, desiring an interview.
Willingly she hastened down stairs to see him, burning with impatience to hear his errand.
"Is the man found?" was her first eager question.
The bustling young lawyer subsided instantly. ”

“ During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds. ”

“ Simmonds, your lordship. He joined us last year."
"I never saw a man take such large mouthfuls. Did you ever see a man take such large mouthfuls, Adams?"
Adams refrained from expressing an opinion, but inwardly he was thrilling with artistic fervor. Mr. Simmonds eating, was one of his best imitations, though Mrs. Adams was inclined to object to it on the score that it was a bad example for the children. To be privileged to witness Lord Emsworth watching and criticizing Mr. Simmonds was to collect material for a double-barreled character study that would assuredly make the hit of the evening. ”

“ But there is an old saying, that you may bring a horse to the pond, but you cannot make him drink. Mr Vanslyperken had given the order, but no one attempted to commence the arrangements. The only person who showed any activity was Smallbones himself, who, not aware that he was to be punished, and hearing all hands piped for something or another, came shambling, all legs and wings, up the hatchway, and looked around to ascertain what was to be done. ”

“ But for the unfortunate clash at the beginning of the term Speed might have found in him a powerful ally instead of a sinister enemy. One quality Smallwood possessed above all others—vanity; and Speed, having affronted that vanity, could count on a more virulent enmity than Smallwood's lackadaisical temperament was ordinarily capable of.
The error lay, of course, in the system which allowed Smallwood to stay at Millstead so long. Smallwood at nineteen was distinctly and quite naturally a man, not a boy; and whatever in him seemed unnatural was forced on him by the Millstead atmosphere. ”

“ Beth replied, "I shall keep them out of mischief. Not one of them has had a bad mark this week."
Then Miss Clifford sent for Miss Smallwood, the mistress of the sixth. "What do you make of Beth Caldwell?" she asked.
"I can't make anything of her," Miss Smallwood answered. "I think she tries, but she does not seem able to keep up with the other girls at all. She seldom knows a lesson or does a sum correctly. I sometimes think she ought to be in the eighth. But then occasionally she shows a knowledge far beyond her years; not a knowledge of school work, but of books and life." ”

“ Nancy Smallwood was shooting little bird-like glances round the room as she greeted Vane that evening. "She has a mission . . . or two. Keeps soldiers from drinking too much and getting into bad hands. Personally, anything—anything would be better than getting into hers."
"I seem," murmured Vane, "to have fallen on my feet. She isn't that gargantuan woman in purple, is she?"
"My dear boy! That's George's mother. You know my husband. No, there she is—the wizened up one in black. . . . And she's going on to the Mainwarings' too—so you'll have to dance with her." ”

“ They’ve got a chattel mortgage for f-five hundred dollars, and if we can’t pay it the Bazar is b-busted. You know about Mr. Smalley. You’ve all been friends of his for years. What d’you think of a man who’ll take away everything Mr. Smalley’s got, just out of m-meanness?”
“Here,” says the officer, “none of that, now. Git off’n that counter and keep quiet.”
Mark looked down at him and says:
“I’ve talked this thing over with my lawyer, and I know what I can do and what I c-can’t. I can keep possession of this store till twelve o’clock to-night if I want to. ”

“ Simpson smoked the fish and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Défago had gone, came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his companion's returning footsteps. ”

“ The plaintiveness of the frightened man’s appeal touched Wade. He realized the weight of misery this pathetic turncoat might expect thereafter at the hands of Britt and his crew of “Busters.” MacLeod was advancing towards the ladder that conducted to the roof, his sullen face lighting with a certain amount of satisfaction. Wade put himself before the ladder.
“Hirin’ men out from under isn’t square woods style, Tommy,” said Ide, shaking his head.
“That man isn’t a slave,” protested Wade. “He is the only man I’ve found in these woods with courage enough to stand up for what’s right, Mr. ”

“ With regard to this Smallwood business, you must, if you think a little, realise that in a place like Millstead you can't behave absolutely without regard for conventions. Smallwood, remember, is nearly your own age. You see what I mean?"
"You mean that I'm not to be trusted with any man nearly my own age?" ”

“ Are you going to let him get away with it?”
“Am I going to let him get away with it!” said Mr. Cootes, annoyed by the foolish question. “Wake me up in the night and ask me!”
“But what are you going to do?”
“Do!” said Mr. Cootes. “Do! I’ll tell you what I’m going to . . .” He paused, and the stern resolve that shone in his face seemed to flicker. “Say, what the hell am I going to do?” he went on somewhat weakly. ”

“ Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. ”

“ PIERRE was no coward, but his slow wit did not allow him to comprehend the change in Sylvester Small, and he decided to take no chances by disobeying the man behind who held a revolver and knew how to use it.
So the guide led the way faithfully across the clearing and to the trail that ran through the forest. It was so dark he could see no more than two feet before him, and the blizzard was driving the fine sleet into his face, but he knew every inch of the trail and had no trouble keeping to it. ”

“ How Simpson found his way alone by the lake and forest might well make a story in itself, for to hear him tell it is to know the passionate loneliness of soul that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in the hollow of its illimitable hand—and laughs. ”

“ At that time Small approached the newsboy in Adelaide Street, who knew the magnate well, and bought his usual evening papers. The boy believed that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure he had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said nothing but the usual things, seemed in no way different from his ordinary mood, and tarried only long enough to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.
Probably there is something significant about the fact that Small did not leave the vicinity of his office until seven fifteen o’clock, when he was due at home by half past six. ”

“ What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I called him.
“Jeeves,” I said, “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I’ve a bit of news for you.”
He came back with a tray and a long glass.
“Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You’ll need it.”
“Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.”
“All right. Please yourself. But you’re going to get a shock. You remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?” ”