Nous étions bien, là!
So sped those happy weeks—with something new and exciting every day—even on rainy days, when we wore waterproofs and big india‑rubber boots and sou'westers, and Chucker‑out's coat got so heavy with the soak that he could hardly drag himself along: and we settled, we three at least, that we would never go to France or Scotland—never any more—never anywhere in the world but Whitby, jolly Whitby—
Ah me! l'homme propose....
Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that hung down behind over the waving masses of her long, thick yellow hair—a blue jersey of the elaborate kind women knit on the Whitby quay—a short, striped petticoat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown stockings on her long, thin legs.
I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimping‑net; with a magnifying‑glass, I can see the little high‑light in the middle of each jet‑black eye—and every detail and charm and perfection of her childish face. Of all the art‑treasures I've amassed in my long life, that is to me the most beautiful, far and away—but I can't look at it yet for more than a second at a time....
"O tempo passato, perchè non ritorni?"
"O tempo passato, perchè non ritorni?"
As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've got the blues. As if I haven't always got the blues!
All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that he's not here himself to point his moral—
"Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte ..."