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Far Country, a — Volume 1 by Winston Churchill
page 31 of 181 (17%)
me in her grey, belted skirt, the familiar red-and-white cameo at her
throat, her heavy hair parted in the middle, in her eyes was an odd,
appealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling with
a Presbyterian conscience. Though she inherited that conscience, I have
often thought she might have succeeded in casting it off--or at least
some of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she
worshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father. Her voice trembled
a little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.

"Tell me about what happened, my son," she said.

It was a terrible moment for me. For my affections were still quiveringly
alive in those days, and I loved her. I had for an instant an instinctive
impulse to tell her the whole story,--South Sea Islands and all! And I
could have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figure
which represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow made
her, suddenly, of small account. Not that she would have understood the
romance, but she would have comprehended me. I knew that she was
powerless to save me from the wrath to come. I wept. It was because I
hated to lie to her,--yet I did so. Fear gripped me, and--like some
respectable criminals I have since known--I understood that any
confession I made would inexorably be used against me.... I wonder
whether she knew I was lying? At any rate, the case appeared to be a
grave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over for
trial....

Vividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while
awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper
and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields
and groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had become
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