Quoit

“ The morning was sunny, breezy, and lovely; the sky a pure deep blue, and without a cloud; the light white mists were rising from the shady glens and haughs where the wimpling burns ran through the leafy copse or under the long yellow broom, when from an eminence Quentin took his last farewell of scenery that was endeared to him by all his recollections of childhood and youth, and heavy, heavy grew his heart as he did so. ”

“ If you neither hear, nor obey the Lord, nor his servants, yet will he send more of his servants among you, so that your end shall be frustrated, that think to restrain them ye call cursed Quakers, from coming among you, by any thing you can do to them. Yea, verily, he hath a seed here among you, for whom we have suffered all this while, and yet suffer; whom the Lord of the harvest will send forth more labourers to gather, out of the mouths of the devourers of all sorts, into his fold, where he will lead them into fresh pastures, even the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake. ”

“ As Mr Quilp folded his note (which was soon written: being a very short one) he encountered the gaze of the small servant. He looked at her, long and earnestly.
‘How are you?’ said the dwarf, moistening a wafer with horrible grimaces.
The small servant, perhaps frightened by his looks, returned no audible reply; but it appeared from the motion of her lips that she was inwardly repeating the same form of expression concerning the note or message.
‘Do they use you ill here? is your mistress a Tartar?’ said Quilp with a chuckle. ”

“ Laste, in the sense of heavy weight, occurs in Richard the Redeles, ed. Skeat, iv. 74. Quad is the Old English equivalent of the Dutch kwaad, bad, a word in very common use. In O.E., þe qued means the evil one, the devil; P. Pl. B. xiv. 189. Cf. note to A. 4357. The omission of the word of before quad may be illustrated by the expression 'four score years,' i. e. of years.
1630. 'The monk put an ape in the man's hood, and in his wife's too.' We should now say, he made him look like an ape. The contents of the hood would be, properly, the man's head and face ”

“ How little can be done in the way of extracting virtues or intellect from a piece of broad-cloth or a beaver hat, we have an instance in the Quakers, who are the most remarkable, and the most unexceptionable class of professors in this kind. ”

“ Quitte, feminine, ‘quince,’ from the equivalent Middle High German quiten, feminine (Old High German *quitina is wanting) , with the remarkable variant küten, from Old High German chutina (Swiss χütene) , ‘quince.’ This latter form alone renders it possible that Quitte was borrowed from the equivalent Romance cotônea, which is probably represented by Italian cotogna and French coing (whence English quince and Dutch kwee) . ”

“ Eager to hear whether the queer old fellow had made any discovery, I departed next morning by the eight o’clock express for London, having left a note with Beryl’s maid explaining the cause of my sudden journey, and soon after eleven was seated with the old German in his lofty laboratory. The table was, as usual, filled with various contrivances—bottles of liquids and test-tubes containing fluids of various hues—while before him, as I entered, a small tube containing a bright blue liquid was bubbling over the spirit-lamp, the heat causing the colour to gradually fade. ”

“ Queed, how much your intellect, your culture, your admirable—ah—poise—amazing they seem to me in so young a man—have appealed to me among a population of Brookes, Bylashes, and Klinkers? You are the first man in many a day that has inspired me with an impulse toward friendship and confidence. ”

“ So saying, Mr Quilp put his hat on and took himself off, and Mrs Quilp, who was afflicted beyond measure by the recollection of the part she had just acted, shut herself up in her chamber, and smothering her head in the bed-clothes bemoaned her fault more bitterly than many less tender-hearted persons would have mourned a much greater offence; for, in the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances. ”

“ He looked now as if he might soon purr, like the cat.
"Ah," he murmured at length, with a slight upward gesture of one hand. "The servant-bell again. Your chit, Monsieur. A hundred francs upon it."
"Done," said Pierre. He too listened eagerly.
As they wait, in listening silence, the reader may as well be initiated into the mysteries of the "chit."
In all foreign communities of the Far East, but particularly in those where English influence prevails, three hybrid words become part of the daily vocabulary. The first is "tiffin," the second "amah," the third and most important, "chit." ”

“ I have always disliked Quakers. I remember a story my father used to tell, when I was a child, about his being over-reached in a most ingenious, practised manner, by one of the scoundrels, as he called the whole race. ”

“ I reckon you think, child, that a caliker or a worsted quilt is a curious sort of a monument—'bout as perishable as the sweepin' and scrubbin' and mendin'. But if folks values things rightly, and knows how to take care of 'em, there ain't many things that'll last longer'n a quilt. Why, I've got a blue and white counterpane that my mother's mother spun and wove, and there ain't a sign o' givin' out in it yet. I'm goin' to will that to my granddaughter that lives in Danville, Mary Frances' oldest child. ”

“ There—there—stop—and perhaps, Quentin, I mayn't marry you. 'Tis said people change when they grow older, and we are very young, you know; but Quentin, dear, I love you very, very much, be assured of that. ”

“ So she took the letter and returning with it to the schoolmaster, said to him, ‘What moved thee to deal thus with me?’ And she repeated to him what her neighbour had told her of her husband’s well-being and of his having sent her a quilt and an extinguisher. ‘Thou art in the right,’ answered he. ‘But excuse me, good woman; Night cccciv.for I was, at the time, troubled and absent-minded and seeing the extinguisher wrapped in the quilt, thought that he was dead and they had shrouded him.’ The woman, not smoking the cheat, said, ‘Thou art excused.’ and taking the letter, went away. ”

“ But, Quenton, I have a great dread of the police; they know too much and too little. So I shook my head, and seeing that Lucy was anxious to examine the key more closely, I put it in her hands and watched her as she ran her fingers over it remarking as she called my attention to it that she had never seen one quite so thin before—that she could almost bend it. ”

“ I am better, but I am on the down grade, Quenton, I who till now have never known one sick day. I shall need attendance—companionship—a man at my side—some one to write my letters—to keep track of my affairs—you or—or Edgar. I cannot have him here always. His temperament is such that it would be almost impossible for him to bear for any length of time the constraint of a sick room. ”

“ If I have any reason to fear the annals of Quodlibet may find no favor with the emerging generation, I can make sure of another class of readers to whom I look with a staunch and unfaltering trust;—that goodly host of ripe and considerate citizens, the survivors of 1840—that salt of the earth, who live on the past, and reckon old memories to be better than a fresh and damp morning journal. ”

“ Quentin laughed, realizing that the man with the lantern and the short pike was a night watchman.
“Pay no attention to the man with the pike,” said he. “If he sees you again and starts to follow you, look him straight in the eye, and say to him firmly: ‘I have the key.’ It is the magic word. As soon as he hears it, he will go away.” ”

“ Queed, intently plucking a dead bough from an overhanging young oak.
"How do you go about measuring a type? When you speak of a high type, exactly what do you mean?"
"When I speak of a high type," said Sharlee, who really did not know exactly what she meant, "I will merely say that I mean a type that is high—lofty, you know—towering over other types." ”

“ In each was a long envelope apparently enclosing a legal document. He laid them, one on each knee and drooped his head a little as he remarked, with a hasty glance first at one document and then at the other:
“Here, Quenton, you see what a man who once thought very well of himself has come to through physical weakness and mental suffering. Here are two wills, one made largely in his favor and one equally largely in yours. They were drawn up the same day by different men, each ignorant of the other’s doing. One of these it is my wish to destroy but I have not yet had the courage to do so ”

“ Mother, poor Quady is not so strong as he used to be; when he pounds the corn, to make nice cakes for me, his hands tremble, and I notice he takes all the broth which you send to him, for he says he has no appetite for anything else. ”

“ Poor Quentin, who was at that age when a young man is apt to slide rather than fall into a regular love fit, was gradually being ensnared.
"The companionship of these few days I shall remember for ever," said he. "You shall indeed be sorrowed for, hermana mia."
"Think only of the present, and not of parting," said she, letting her cheek sink upon his shoulder, as they sat, hand in hand, in the window of the little boudoir, the objects of which were half hidden in the twilight. ”

“ I delighted to spell out the album quilt until I knew almost every line by heart; while the curious medley which these different scraps of poetry presented reminded me very much of a play, in which one person repeats a line, to which another must find a rhyme. When Aunt Henshaw died, which was just about the time that I was grown up, she left the quilt to me in her will ”

“ It is a matter to which few people pay any attention.
[117]
“Come, there you go again, wandering away from your subject,” said the old woman.
“Be quiet,” Don Gil ejaculated. “This matter of signs is very interesting; don’t you think so?” he asked Quentin.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, don’t you? Well, for example, some night you may see a closed store with a sign which reads ‘Perez,’ with two red hands hanging from the board. What kind of business do those red hands indicate?”
“A glove store, perhaps?” asked Quentin.
“That’s right. How clever the lad is! What does a basin indicate?” ”

“ Just then a new sect of religious people who called themselves Quakers, or Friends, had sprung up in England. They were much despised. A Quaker believed that all men are equal, so he never took his hat off to any one, not even the king. ”

“ I have seen a book, entitled 'Quidlibet ex Quolibet', or the art of making anything out of anything; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in gross to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings. ”

“ She went back upon her thoughts: the present, the speck of the present, which was so small.... Quaerts, Quaerts’ very attitude, rising up before her just now. Was he in any way concerned with her writing down those sentences? The past a sorrow; the future an illusion.... Why, why illusion?
“And Jules, who likes him,” she thought. “And Amélie, who spoke of him ... but she knows nothing.... What is there in him, what lurks behind him: his visionary image? Why did he [80] come here? Why do I dislike him so? Do I dislike him? ”

“ Deigning no other than a practical answer to this remonstrance, Mr Quilp raised the hot saucepan to his lips, and deliberately drank off all the spirit it contained, which might have been in quantity about half a pint, and had been but a moment before, when he took it off the fire, bubbling and hissing fiercely. ”

“ We talked a little longer—we had strolled into the morning-room, and sat down there—when Whichelo said suddenly—
“That discovery of a mummy in Sir Charles’ town house is curious, eh? How would you account for that, Ashton? And for the hole in the ceiling?”
“I don’t account for it at all,” I replied quickly, trying to look unconcerned beneath his narrow, scrutinising gaze. “What is your theory with regard to it?”
“Oh, I never theorise in cases of that kind,” he replied. “What is the use of theorising? One is almost certain to be wrong.” ”

“ My one wish is to push him to the front just as fast as he can stride. Why, I discovered Queed—you and I did, that is—and I think I may claim to have done something toward training him. To speak quite frankly, the situation was this: In spite of his great abilities, he is still very young and inexperienced. Give him a couple of years in which to grow and broaden and get his bearings more fully, and he will be the very best man in sight for the place. ”

“ If the man thinks me curious, I know what to do; he is neither the Schoolmaster nor Master Rodolph. I will follow the Chouette like her shadow, and the man shall not say a word that I do not overhear. He will then be off, and after that I will have one little turn with the Chouette. ”

“ Before Alla during the meates space,
The child stood, looking in the kinges face.
This Alla king had of this child great wonder,
And to the senator he said anon,
"Whose is that faire child that standeth yonder?"
"I n'ot," quoth he, "by God and by Saint John;
A mother he hath, but father hath he none,
That I of wot:" and shortly in a stound
He told to Alla how this child was found. ”

“ Now, why they call it Frenchman's Creek no one is supposed to know, but this story will explain. And the story I heard on the spot from an old verderer, who had it from his grandfather, who bore no unimportant part in it—as will be seen. Maybe you will find it out of keeping with its scenery. In my own words you certainly would: and so I propose to relate it just as the verderer told it to me.
I
First of all you'll let me say that a bad temper is an affliction, whoever owns it, and shortening to life. ”