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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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79 heavy lids and thought that he would sleep... The stillness was so profound that he heard a little animal twittering somewhere near by under the snow. It made a small frightened cheep like a field mouse, and he wondered languidly if it were hurt. Then he understood that it must be in pain: pain so excruciating that he seemed, mysteriously, to feel it shooting through his own body. He tried in vain to roll over in the direction of the sound, and stretched his left arm out across the snow. And now it was as though he felt rather than heard the twittering; it seemed to be under his palm, which rested on something soft and springy. The thought of the animal’s suffering was intolerable to him and he struggled to raise himself, and could not because a rock, or some huge mass, seemed to be lying on him. But he continued to finger about cautiously with his left hand, thinking he might get hold of the little creature and help it; and all at once he knew that the soft thing he had touched was Mattie’s hair and that his hand was on her face. He dragged himself to his knees, the monstrous load on him moving with him as he moved, and his hand went over and over her face, and he felt that the twittering came from her lips... He got his face down close to hers, with his ear to her mouth, and in the darkness he saw her eyes open and heard her say his name. “Oh, Matt, I thought we’d fetched it,” he moaned; and far off, up the hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: “I ought to be getting him his feed...” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ETHAN FROME THE QUERULOUS DRONE ceased as I entered Frome’s kitchen, and of the two women sitting there I could not tell which had been the speaker. One of them, on my appearing, raised her tall bony figure from her seat, not as if to welcome me-for she threw me no more than a brief glance of surprisebut simply to set about preparing the meal which Frome’s absence had delayed. A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead and fastened at the back by a broken comb. She had pale opaque eyes which revealed nothing and reflected nothing, and her narrow lips were of the same sallow colour as her face. The other woman was much smaller and slighter. She sat huddled in an armchair near the stove, and when I came in she turned her |
