News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 39 of 243 (16%)
page 39 of 243 (16%)
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few hours' sleep had picked him round. He hardened his eyes on me,
anyway, and says he--'Does he? Then he's a bloody liar!' "I didn't make no answer, sir. I saw what he had in mind--that I'd come off on the first opportunity, cadgin' for some reward. I turned the boat's head about, and started to pull back for the _Early and Late_. The men laughed after me, jeering-like. And Dog Mitchell, he laughed, too, in the wake o' them, with a kind of challenge as he saw my lack o' pluck. And away back in Plymouth the bells kept on ringing. "That's the story. You asked how I could tell what the blessed Lord felt like when Peter denied. I don't know. But I seemed to feel like it, just that once." THE MONT-BAZILLAC. I have a sincere respect and liking for the Vicar of Gantick--"th' old Parson Kendall," as we call him--but have somewhat avoided his hospitality since Mrs. Kendall took up with the teetotal craze. I say nothing against the lady's renouncing, an she choose, the light dinner claret, the cider, the port (pale with long maturing in the wood) which her table afforded of yore: nor do I believe that the Vicar, excellent man, repines deeply--though I once caught the faint sound of a sigh as we stood together and conned his cider-apple trees, un-garnered, shedding their fruit at random in the long grasses. For his glebe contains a lordly orchard, and it used to be |
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