Mrs. Skewton

“ The sexton's face beamed with joy. "Yes, indeed, and well married. I have a good wife. You'll see her when you call on me."
"A good wife--you are a happy man!" said Freyer in a low tone.
"She has a great deal to do just now for the little one."
"Ah--you have a child, too!"
"And such a beautiful one!" added Anastasia. "A lovely little girl! She will be a Mary some day. But the sexton's wife is spoiling her, she hardly lets her out of her arms."
"A good mother--that must be beautiful!" said Freyer, with a strange expression, as if speaking in a dream. ”

“ It was a large old-fashioned garden, separated on the further side by a low hedge from the old ivy-covered church. On the back steps of the church, Sextoness Jane was shaking out her duster. She was old and gray and insignificant looking; her duties as sexton, in which she had succeeded her father, were her great delight. The will with which she sang and worked now seemed to have in it something of reproach for the girl stretched out idly in the hammock. Nothing more than half-way things, and not too many of those, had ever come Sextoness Jane's way. ”

“ She makes the whole garden her special charge and delight, but this particular corner of it is as a kingdom conquered, where to reign. Mrs. Stevenson, the tutelary genius of Skerryvore, is a woman of small physical stature but surely of heroic mould. Her features are clear cut and delicate, but marked by unmistakable strength of character; her hair is an unglossy black, and her complexion darker than one would expect in a woman of Dutch extraction.... Her personality, no less than her husband's, impresses itself potently on all who have the good fortune to be welcomed at Skerryvore. ”

“ The mother-in-law of a lawyer, called Kvashin, and his wife, Nadyezhda Filippovna, dressed in waterproofs and shawls, were sitting over the dinner table in the dining-room. It was written on the countenance of the elder lady that she was, thank God, well-fed, well-clothed and in good health, that she had married her only daughter to a good man, and now could play her game of patience with an easy conscience; her daughter, a rather short, plump, fair young woman of twenty, with a gentle anemic face, was reading a book with her elbows on the table ”

“ I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people—my kindred especially—that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to try to win her for his wife. ”

“ Their ideas of right and wrong differ in no respect from our own, except in their professed inability to see how it can be improper for a man to have more than one wife. A year or two ago several of the wives of those who had been absent with us petitioned the chief for leave to marry again. They thought that it was of no use waiting any longer, their husbands must be dead; but Sekeletu refused permission; he himself had bet a number of oxen that the Doctor would return with their husbands, and he had promised the absent men that their wives should be kept for them. ”

“ She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two big claws.
"There is no dowry—and we don't think much of that," said Tsybukin to the aunt. "We took a wife from a poor family for our son Stepan, too, and now we can't say too much for her. In house and in business alike she has hands of gold."
Lipa stood in the doorway and looked as though she would say: "Do with me as you will, I trust you," while her mother Praskovya the work-woman hid herself in the kitchen numb with shyness. ”

“ The sweat popped out on Skeeter’s face, his fingers trembled, and his lips were drawn in a straight, nervous line.
“Gosh!” he sighed. “Dis is de hardest wuck I ever done, an’ I ain’t done it yit. Dis job ain’t even good started. It would take about fo’teen womans to undress dis valumtime doll. I bet his maw melted him in a cookin’ pot an’ poured him into dese clothes.” ”

“ To Skeeter’s surprise, nobody believed him.
“Naw, suh,” the reverend Vinegar Atts proclaimed, “you muss hab said somepin shameful to dat little gal. She wusn’t show-actin’ when she bust out cryin’ like dat.”
“Dat’s de way I figger,” Hitch Diamond growled. “Ef you wus a’ innercent man, how come you didn’t stan’ yo’ ground’ an’ fight when dat Deo wus fixin’ to pound yo’ face in?”
“I ain’t no fightin’ man,” Skeeter protested. “I’s a bizzness man. But I didn’t say nothin’ an’ I didn’t do nothin’—I wus discriminated agin by dem show folks!” ”

“ Skeeter exclaimed quickly. “Womans ain’t be allowed in de Scratch. But ef yo’ little boy makes a hit, I might could git de Revun Vinegar Atts to gib a baby show at de Shoofly chu’ch, an’ I’m shore yo’ little boy would tote off de prize.”
“You kin hab him, Skeeter!” the woman exclaimed exultantly. “You come fer him to-night atter supper. I’ll hab him all dressed up like a circus bandwagon. Only I gibs you dis advice right now: don’t grab my chile by de lef’ arm onless you wants him to sot up a howl. Dat arm is powerful sore!” ”

“ But I've always felt that you think for yourself, and don't care a rap what the world is thinking. I've looked in to-night to say good-bye, and to ask you, if you can get the time, just to give an eye to—to Mrs. Chepstow now and again. I know she would value a visit from you, and she really is infernally lonely. If you go, she won't bore you. She's a clever woman, and cares for things you care for. Will you look in on her now and then?"
Isaacson lifted his hand from the book. ”

“ The latter two professed a great and eternal attachment to each other, but Mrs Valetta disposed of their friendship thus:
“Mrs Skeffy and Anna Cleeve make me tired. They simply stick together because they know so much about each other they daren’t quarrel, but a quarrel is bound to come one of these days and then their secrets will be flying about all over the place and we’ll have something to amuse us. Anna. Cleeve is far too clever a girl not to tire of Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who is the silliest woman I have ever met. ”

“ Margaret had long since talked with Miss Skeat about her disturbed affairs, and concerning the prospect that was before her of being comparatively poor. And Miss Skeat, in her high-bred old-fashioned way, had laid her hand gently on the Countess's arm in token of sympathy.
"Dear Countess," she had said, "please remember that it will not make any difference to me, and that I will never leave you. Poverty is not a new thing to me, my dear." The tears came into Margaret's eyes as she pressed the elder lady's hand in silence. ”

“ A woman lives in the thoughts of men about her. At this moment Mrs. Chepstow lived in Isaacson's thought that she looked younger, less faded, and more beautiful. Her vanity was awake. His thought of her had suddenly increased her value in her own eyes, made her think she could attract him. ”

“ You'll quarrel with your wife after you are married, and say: 'If that mangy Jewess hadn't given me the money, I should perhaps have been as free as a bird to-day!" Is your fiancee pretty?"
"Oh yes. . . ."
"H'm! . . . Anyway, better something, if it's only beauty, than nothing. Though however beautiful a woman is, it can never make up to her husband for her silliness."
"That's original!" laughed the lieutenant. "You are a woman yourself, and such a woman-hater!"
"A woman . . ." smiled Susanna. "It's not my fault that God has cast me into this mould, is it? ”

“ Father had a matter of five hundred laid by and a little over."
Captain Seccombe removed his legs from the cabin-table, tilted his chair forward, and half rose in his seat.
"You bought her?"
"That's what I'm telling you, sir; though father'd have put it much clearer. You see, he laid it before the Lord; and then he laid it before all of us. It preyed on his mind. My sister Susannah stood up and she said, 'I reckon I'm the most respectably married of all of you, having a farm of my own; but we can sell up, and all the world's a home to them that fears the Lord. ”

“ Skeeter made a bee-line for Mustard Prophet’s cabin where Mrs. Happy Rocket could be found. But he had no matrimonial intentions.
“I jes’ drapped over to tell you ’bout little Ready Rocket, Happy,” Skeeter began as soon as he was seated. “Ready won’t be home to-night.”
“Won’t—which?” Happy’s voice was almost a scream.
“Ready’s gwine lay out to-night,” Skeeter remarked easily, lighting a cigarette.
“How come?” Happy wailed, and her voice had a note of hysteria.
“It happened dis way,” Skeeter replied. “Ready got a little sleepy an’ I spread him down a pallet on de flo’ in de rear room. ”

“ She was a self-contained woman, this wife of a master mechanic in one of the great shops hard by; but her jaw fell at this, and she forgot to chide or resist her child when he began to pull her towards the open kitchen door.
Sweetwater, sensitive to the least change in the human face, prayed that the husband might be detained, if only for five minutes longer, while he, Sweetwater, worked this promising mine.
“You were looking out,” he ventured. “And you did see that horse and cutter. What luck! It may save a man’s life.” ”

“ The whole party was seated at the table playing cards. And Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was staring at her husband with a look of positive hatred in her eyes.
“I don’t cheat,” she was furiously asserting.
“Yes, you do; you always do; you think it’s funny. And all the time everybody else is hating you for it,” responded the warlike Monty amiably. Mrs Valetta and Miss Cleeve exchanged glances of the utmost boredom and disgust. Indeed, if there is anything more desperate in the way of ennui than to listen to a husband and wife quarrelling over cards, I don’t know it. ”

“ I could hear him stirring the tea they had given him, and the jingle of his spoon in the saucer afterwards, and the showers of questions and exclamations that fell upon him as he stood drinking. Very clearly I heard Mrs Valetta’s question, though it was in a soft and entreating voice I had never heard her use before:
“Why are you going, Kim? Surely it is your duty to stay here and mind us.”
“Yes, do stay,” implored Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “It will make such a difference. How safe we’ll all feel!”
Anna Cleeve said nothing, but I could feel her looking. ”

“ If she marries and children come, she will have no time to think about the garden. What I fear most is: she will marry some fine gentleman, and he will be greedy, and he will let the garden to people who will run it for profit, and everything will go to the devil the very first year! In our work females are the scourge of God!”
Yegor Semyonitch sighed and paused for a while.
“Perhaps it is egoism, but I tell you frankly: I don’t want Tanya to get married. I am afraid of it! There is one young dandy comes to see us, bringing his violin and scraping on it ”

“ Merchutkin: Your excellency, when can I have it? I need the money to-day.
Shipuchin (aside, angrily) : Re—mark—ab—ly horrible woman! (Softly, to her.) Madame, I’ve told you already. This is a bank, a private, commercial establishment.
Merchutkin: Be kind to me, your excellency; be a father to me! If the medical certificate isn’t enough, I can produce a certificate from the police. Tell them to give me the money.
Shipuchin (sighs heavily) : Ugh!
Tatiana (to Merchutkin) : My dear lady, you’ve been told that you have made a mistake. What a woman you are, to be sure! ”

“ Skeeter answered. “A new nigger woman is visitin’ in dis town, an’ me an her begun to shine up to each yuther real prompt. She’s got a little boy jes’ de size an’ age an’ color of dis here brat of your’n.”
“Dat don’t he’p me none,” Whiffle mourned.
“When I talks—you listen!” Skeeter snapped. “Don’t try to bake no biscuits till I git done mixin’ de dough! All I wants you to do is to git de repote to Shin Bone private an’ confidential dat you is gwine out of town fer a little rest an’ dat I will keep yo’ baby till you gits back. Atter dat, jes’ take yo’ brat an’ go!” ”

“ SEXTON believes he knows a thing or two; O'BRIEN is understood to be something of an orator. FLYNN will show House how all these qualities may be combined in one man. Does it by the tiresome twenty minutes, the lamentable half-hour; popping up on every question with comically judicial air; talking on with fatal feeble flatulent fluency, whilst GILL sits nursing his hat awaiting his turn.
Alack for Irish humour, eloquence and deviltry, that it should come to this! ”

“ It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the Merchant have generally accepted her without a protest—so much do youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always to have been good to her ”

“ But she could not bear to confess it, for all that, and a moment afterwards she was sitting upright again in her chair, feeling that she had weathered the first storm. Her companion, who was not ignorant of her ways, contented herself then with patting Margaret's hand caressingly during the instant it remained in her own, before it was drawn away. There was a world of kindness and of gentle humanity in the gaunt gentlewoman's manner, showing that the heart within was not withered yet. Then Miss Skeat flattened the book before her with the paper-cutter, and began to read. ”