ONE:She rose from her examination of the bud, her face still flushed."They held out for two days, and during all that time hardly a man of us slept more than a few minutes at a stretch. Many of the coolies were suffering terribly with thirst and hunger, and they asked to have their wants supplied while they were making negotiations for peace. The captain refused anything but the most unconditional surrender, and the only concession he would grant was to have the dead bodies passed up to be thrown overboard. Of course the coolies were very glad of this, as they were suffering from the fearful condition of the narrow space where they were confined. When this work was completed, they asked for half[Pg 398] an hour's time to make a proposal for surrender, which was allowed them.
TWO:At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy, clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat to the hour:Then came the lunch, in the town-hall near by, at which the bishop did his duty, and the guests theirs. There was a table and a raised dais for the principal of those, and on the floor of the hall a dozen others for the less distinguished. Close by against the wall were sitting those of Keelings staff who had been bidden to the ceremony, and he had already satisfied himself that Norah was there. Then at the close of lunch came Lord Inverbrooms speech, and at the close of that the sentence for which Mrs Keeling had been waiting.
FORE:{219}
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