Woolsack

“ Johnny’s father and mother were both dead and buried, therefore the boy lived with his grandfather, and assisted the old man in his business.
As our hero journeyed to the market with his wood, he often met young Master Woolcrop riding by on his milk-white pony, with a tall groom following on a fine charger, standing I don’t know how many hands high; and I am sorry to say our little hero grew very envious; for, be it known, young Woolcrop’s father was one of the richest men in New South Wales, while Johnny’s grandfather had not enough cash to purchase a set of harness for the old mare. ”

“ Rose a gold necklace. Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs. Ramsay absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her face) in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused her—the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time, they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again, because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition. ”

“ This is no place for a girl like you."
"Say lady!" cried Eliot. "She is a Southern lady, sir!"
"Bah!" said Royce; "you are a fine person to talk of ladies.—Are you going, Miss Dooris?"
Great tears stood in Honor's eyes; she did not stir.
"She will not go, John," said Wainwright, "because that man is her cousin—he is an Eliot."
"He is a murderer!" said Royce, filling up the doorway again, and measuring with his eye the breadth of his opponent's shoulders and muscle. "Now, then, are you with me or against me, Stephen? If against me, by Heaven! I will fight you both." ”

“ Clacton,” said Mary dutifully, but her tone was flat and tired.
“We learn to do without holidays, Miss Datchet,” said Mr. Clacton, with a spark of satisfaction in his eye.
He wished particularly to have her opinion of the lemon-coloured leaflet. According to his plan, it was to be distributed in immense quantities immediately, in order to stimulate and generate, “to generate and stimulate,” he repeated, “right thoughts in the country before the meeting of Parliament.”
“We have to take the enemy by surprise,” he said. “They don’t let the grass grow under their feet. ”

“ Woolf that he came to ask shelter for a gentleman who was wishing to get into Wales, and who could not safely travel by day. Mr. Woolf hesitated, and began to ask for further information in respect to the stranger. Richard said that he was an officer who had made his escape from the battle of Worcester, "Then," said Mr. Woolf, "I should hazard my life by concealing him, which I should not be willing to do for any body, unless it were the king." Richard then told him that it was his majesty. ”

“ Clacton, don’t you think we should circularize the provinces with Partridge’s last speech? What? You’ve not read it? Oh, it’s the best thing they’ve had in the House this Session. Even the Prime Minister—”
But Mary cut her short.
“We don’t allow shop at tea, Sally,” she said firmly. “We fine her a penny each time she forgets, and the fines go to buying a plum cake,” she explained, seeking to draw Katharine into the community. She had given up all hope of impressing her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Seal apologized. “It’s my misfortune to be an enthusiast,” she said, turning to Katharine. ”

“ Mary had a ruffled appearance, as if she had been running her fingers through her hair in the course of her conversation; she was dressed more or less like a Russian peasant girl. She sat down again in a chair which looked as if it had been her seat for some hours; the saucer which stood upon the arm contained the ashes of many cigarettes. Mr. Basnett, a very young man with a fresh complexion and a high forehead from which the hair was combed straight back, was one of that group of “very able young men” suspected by Mr. Clacton, justly as it turned out, of an influence upon Mary Datchet. ”

“ They were coming upon a little open space fringed about with trees, and suddenly Thekla exclaimed, in an astonished voice,—
"Why, Max! Look! There are people in there. I can see them through the bushes!"
"People?" cried Max. "Stealing wood, no doubt. Quiet, Thekla! don't make any noise: we'll creep up, and catch them at it. They shall see what the Ranger says to such doings."
So, like mice, they crept forward, and peeped through the screen of boughs. But there was no sound of chopping, and nobody was meddling with the wood. ”

“ So much depends then, thought Lily Briscoe, looking at the sea which had scarcely a stain on it, which was so soft that the sails and the clouds seemed set in its blue, so much depends, she thought, upon distance: whether people are near us or far from us; for her feeling for Mr. Ramsay changed as he sailed further and further across the bay. It seemed to be elongated, stretched out; he seemed to become more and more remote. He and his children seemed to be swallowed up in that blue, that distance; but here, on the lawn, close at hand, Mr. Carmichael suddenly grunted. She laughed. ”

“ The beach was in sight all the way on the left; Eve’s figure in three-quarter length was visible whenever Hollis turned his head in that direction, which was often. She gained on them. Then she passed them.
“She’s a tip-top walker, isn’t she? I see her coming in almost every day from ’way out somewhere—she doesn’t mind how far. Our ladies here don’t walk much; they don’t seem to find it interesting. But Miss Bruce, now—she says the woods are beautiful. Can’t say I have found ’em so myself.”
“Have you had any new cases lately?” inquired the judge, coldly.
“Did that Paul tell you I was a lawyer? ”

“ There had been an outbreak of festivities in the neighbourhood of lethargic Ottinge; the climax of these was a grand ball given by Mrs. Woolcock at Westmere, to celebrate her youngest daughter’s engagement to Lord Lowestoff. Every one who was any one—and indeed not a few nobodies—were bidden as guests; Mrs. Woolcock liked to see her rooms crammed to suffocation. ”

“ But simple-minded, harmless old fellows do not run like mad if one happens to wake; so the younger pursued. He was strong, he was fleet; but the shape was fleeter, and the space between them grew wider. Suddenly the shape turned and darted into the water, running out until only its head was visible above the surface, a dark spot in the foggy moonlight. Waring pursued, and saw meanwhile another dark spot beyond, an empty skiff which came rapidly inshore-ward, until it met the head, which forthwith took to itself a body, clambered in, lifted the oars, and was gone in an instant. ”

“ At dawn he rose, made a fire under the old chimney, cooked some venison, baked some corn-bread, and, placing them in his bag, started into South Devil, a bundle of torches slung on his back as before, his gun in his hand, his revolver and knife in his belt. "They have already been gone two days," he said to himself; "they must be coming toward home, now." He thought Carl was carrying out his cherished design of exploring the swamp. There was a trail—hatchet marks on the trees, and broken boughs. "That's old Scip. Carl would never have been so systematic," he thought. ”

“ I don't believe myself in tramping in and out of a front door every day; but on Sundays, now, when we have on our best clothes, we shall come in and out respectably. You'll feel like another person, Nounce; and I'm sure I shall—I shall feel like Ledham again—my!" And Prudence actually laughed.
Still holding Nounce's hand, she went round to the front of the house.
"STILL HOLDING NOUNCE'S HAND, SHE WENT ROUND TO THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE"
The cow-shed was shedding forth its usual odors; Prudence took a stone and struck a great resounding blow on its side. ”

“ It’s an imagination—a story one tells oneself. You have yours too?”
“You're with me in mine. You're the thing I make up, you see.”
“Oh, I see,” she sighed. “That’s why it’s so impossible.” She turned upon him almost fiercely. “You must try to stop it,” she said.
“I won't,” he replied roughly, “because I—” He stopped. He realized that the moment had come to impart that news of the utmost importance which he had tried to impart to Mary Datchet, to Rodney upon the Embankment, to the drunken tramp upon the seat. How should he offer it to Katharine? He looked quickly at her. ”

“ He had ever a warm heart for Woolwich, where he had been born and brought up. He often returned to it, sometimes to carry his mother a share of his week's wages while she lived, and afterwards to refresh himself with a sight of the neighbourhood with which he had been so familiar when a boy. He liked its green common, with the soldiers about it; Shooter's Hill, with its out-look over Kent and down the valley of the Thames; the river busy with shipping, and the royal craft loading and unloading their armaments at the dockyard wharves. ”

“ I could not face William and Cassandra. They want us———” here she paused. “They insist that we are engaged,” she substituted, “and we couldn’t talk at all, or explain anything. I want———” Her wants were so vast, now that she was in communication with Ralph, that the pencil was utterly inadequate to conduct them on to the paper; it seemed as if the whole torrent of Kingsway had to run down her pencil. ”

“ Karl and Gustav were there, and the old woolly horse had already gone to the station with their boxes. Among the others came Christine, Karl's former affianced, heartwhole and smiling, already betrothed to a new lover; but no Wilhelmina. Good wishes and farewells were exchanged, and at last the two soldiers started away, falling into the marching step and watched with furtive satisfaction by the three trustees, who stood together in the shadow of the smithy apparently deeply absorbed in a broken-down cask. ”

“ She knows all the nooks and corners of Newport better than anybody else."
"Mamma, you must take us there some day," said Georgie.
"Oh, do, and let me go with you," pleaded Maud. "I should like so much to see them again."
"Won't you take me too?" said Belle Jeffrys.
"We should all like to go," remarked Julia, slyly. "Oh, Mrs. Gray, dear, I have such a lovely idea! Give us a picnic yourself, one of the nice old-fashioned sort that you used to have when you were young, in the Paradise Valley; won't you, dear Mrs. Gray? Oh, do!" ”

“ The traffic respected it; vans were stopped.
I can't keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as they marched up Whitehall, and sure enough, on they marched, past him, past every one, in their steady way, as if one will worked legs and arms uniformly, and life, with its varieties, its irreticences, had been laid under a pavement of monuments and wreaths and drugged into a stiff yet staring corpse by discipline. One had to respect it; one might laugh; but one had to respect it, he thought. There they go, thought Peter Walsh, pausing at the edge of the pavement ”

“ William answered, delighted, Mary guessed, at this little compliment. “Why, I always travel with a notebook. And I ask my way to the picture gallery the very first thing in the morning. And then I meet men, and talk to them. There’s a man in my office who knows all about the Flemish school. I was telling Miss Datchet about the Flemish school. I picked up a lot of it from him—it’s a way men have—Gibbons, his name is. You must meet him. We’ll ask him to lunch. And this not caring about art,” he explained, turning to Mary, “it’s one of Katharine’s poses, Miss Datchet. ”

“ He seldom leaves the Straits; he never speaks of himself; always he appears as you saw him, carefully dressed and stately. Each summer when he is seen on the street, there is more or less curiosity about him among the summer visitors, for he is quite unlike the rest of us Mackinac people. But no one can discover anything more than I have told you, and those who have persisted so far as to sail over to the Chenaux either lose their way among the channels, or if they find the house, they never find him ”

“ As Wynyard contemplated Woolcock’s position and the desperate obstacles that lay in his own path, he picked many blades of grass. Naturally he disliked his rival; he remembered him when he was in the upper fourth at Eton, a big, loutish fellow—not of course in Pop—and an awful duffer at games; who never did anything for himself, that others could be bullied into doing for him. “Woolly” was now a stout, sleek, well-groomed man of thirty, with a heavy red face, a lethargic manner, and—in the company of respectable women—a great talent for silence.
Supposing that Aurea was talked over? ”

“ COUSIN HELEN'S VISIT.
LITTLE knot of the school-girls were walking home together one afternoon in July. As they neared Dr. Carr's gate, Maria Fiske exclaimed, at the sight of a pretty bunch of flowers lying in the middle of the sidewalk:
"Oh my!" she cried, "see what somebody's dropped! I'm going to have it." She stooped to pick it up. But, just as her fingers touched the stems, the nosegay, as if bewitched, began to move. Maria made a bewildered clutch. The nosegay moved faster, and at last vanished under the gate, while a giggle sounded from the other side of the hedge. ”

“ Georgie gathered a great basketful of nasturtiums, heliotrope, and mignonette to carry down to Miss Gisborne, and Marian was sent off in the village-cart with a similar basketful for Mrs. Frewen. The house was all in a confusion of packing. Frederic was wrapping tissue-paper round the picture-frames, Elizabeth counting linen and silver, the gardeners emptying the balcony boxes. Mrs. Gray proposed that Gertrude and Candace should go for a last walk on the Cliffs, and so be out of the way of these discomforts.
"There is nothing for you to do," she said. ”

“ William persisted. “Why did you say that just now about my behaviour to animals?” As he spoke he rattled his stick against the bars of the cage, which gave his words an accompaniment peculiarly exasperating to Katharine’s nerves.
“Because it’s true. You never see what any one feels,” she said. “You think of no one but yourself.”
“That is not true,” said William. By his determined rattling he had now collected the animated attention of some half-dozen apes. Either to propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings, he proceeded to offer them the apple which he held. ”