In The Roar Of The Sea, A Tale Of The Cornish Coast - Livres de poche

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA - I892 - CHAPTER I. - OVER AND DONE. SITTING in the parsonage garden, in a white frock, with a pale green sash about her waist, leaning back against the red-brick wall, her glowing copper hair lit by the evening sun, was Judith Trevisa. She was tossing guelder-roses into the air some dozens were strewn about her feet on the gravel, but one remained of the many she had plucked and thrown and caught, and thrown and caught again for a sunny afternoon hour. As each greenish-white ball of flowers went up into the air, it diffused a faint but pleasant fragrance. When I have done with you, my beauty, I have done altogether, said Judith. With what Her father spoke. He had come up unperceived by the girl, burdened with a sl ovel in one hand and a bucket in the other, looking pale, weary, and worn. Papa, you nearly spoiled my game. Let me finish, and I will speal. Is it a very serious mattcr, Judith, and en grossing 3 Engrossing, but not serious, Je tanr se. The old rector seated himself on the bench beside her, and he also leaned back against the red-brick, gold-and-grey-lichen-spotted wall, and looked into the distance before him, waiting till his daughter was ready to speak, not, perhaps, sorry to have a little rest first, for he was over-tired. Had Judith not been absorbed in her ball-play with the guelder-rose bunch, she would have noticed his haggard appearance, the green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the beaded brow. But she was counting the rebounds of her ball, bent on sustaining her play as long as was possible to her. She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and had the old man not been over-tired, l ew ould have thought so with a throb of parentalpride. She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in bone, with face and hands of porcelain transparency and whiteness, with, moreover, that incomparable complexion only seen in the British Isles, and then only with red-gold hair. Her bronze leather shoes were the hue of some large flies that basked and frisked on the warm wall, only slightly disturbed by the girls play, to return again and run and preen themselves again, and glitter jewel-like as studs on that sun-balied, lichen-enamelled wall. Her eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these flies, iridescent with the changing lights of the declining sun, and the changed direction of her glance following the dancing ball of guelder-rose. Her long fingers might have been of china, but that when raised so that the sun struck their backs they wcre turned OVER A N . D O N . 3 to a translucent rose. There was no colour in her cheek, only the faintest suffusion of pink on the temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves of luminous molten copper dashing against the brick wall. I have done my work, said the rector...