She peeped within her purse.
... And there was Godmother’s chain that she would sell!
It should bring grist; perhaps close on a thousand pounds. Misericordia: to be compelled to part with it!
Opening a levant-covered box, she drew out a long flat tray.
Adorable pearls.
How clearly now they brought her Godmother to mind ... a little old body ... with improbable cherry-cheeks, and excrescent upper lip, with always the miniatures of her three deceased husbands clinging about one arm.... ‘Aren’t they pleasant?’ she would say proudly every now and then.... What talks they had had; and sometimes of an evening through the mauve moonlight they would strut together.
Ah! She had been almost ugly then; clumsy, gawky, gauche....
Now that she was leaving Applethorp, for ever perhaps, how dormant impressions revived!
The Saunders’ Fifeshire bull, one New Year’s night, ravaging the Close, driven frantic by the pealings of the bells. The time poor Dixon got drowned—at a Flower Show, a curate’s eyes—a German governess’s walk—a mould of calves-foot-jelly she had let fall in the Cathedral once, on her way somewhere—
She replaced ruefully her pearls.