Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade
page 9 of 1090 (00%)
and two that were unwilling. The unable ones were, 1, Giles, a dwarf,
of the wrong sort, half stupidity, half malice, all head and claws and
voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through
thick and thin by his mother; 2, Little Catherine, a poor little girl
that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through
it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes; and
fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones
were Sybrandt, the youngest, a ne'er-do-weel, too much in love with play
to work; and Cornelis, the eldest, who had made calculations, and stuck
to the hearth, waiting for dead men's shoes. Almost worn out by their
repeated efforts, and above all dispirited by the moral and physical
infirmities of those that now remained on hand, the anxious couple would
often say, "What will become of all these when we shall be no longer
here to take care of them?" But when they had said this a good many
times, suddenly the domestic horizon cleared, and then they used
still to say it, because a habit is a habit, but they uttered it half
mechanically now, and added brightly and cheerfully, "But thanks to St.
Bavon and all the saints, there's Gerard."

Young Gerard was for many years of his life a son apart and he was going
into the Church, and the Church could always maintain her children by
hook or by crook in those days: no great hopes, because his family had
no interest with the great to get him a benefice, and the young man's
own habits were frivolous, and, indeed, such as our cloth merchant
would not have put up with in any one but a clerk that was to be. His
trivialities were reading and penmanship, and he was so wrapped up in
them that often he could hardly be got away to his meals. The day
was never long enough for him; and he carried ever a tinder-box and
brimstone matches, and begged ends of candles of the neighbours, which
he lighted at unreasonable hours--ay, even at eight of the clock at
DigitalOcean Referral Badge