The Story of Old Fort Loudon. Mary Noailles Murfree

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ well for the elder two that their attention was diverted now and again by the effort to console Fifine in a minor distress, for with the ill-adjusted sense of proportion peculiar to childhood she had begun to clamor loudly too for her cat—her mignonne, her douce fillette that she had brought so far in her arms or on her back.

      Alas, poor Fifine! to learn thus early how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! For indeed Kitty might have seemed to lie under the imputation of having merely "played baby" in order to secure free transportation. At all events, she was a cat now, the only one in the fort, and for all she knew in the settlement. The douce mignonne was in high elation, now walking the palisades, now peeping in at a loop-hole in the upper story of one of the block-houses where a sentinel was regularly on guard, being able to scan from the jutting outlook not only the exterior of the fort on two sides, but a vast extent of darkling country. In his measured tramp to and fro in the shadowy apartment lighted only by the glimmer of the night without, he suddenly saw a flicker at the loop-hole he was approaching, caught a transient glimpse of a face, the gleam of a fiery eye, and he nearly dropped his loaded firelock in amazement.

      "By George!" he exclaimed, "I thought that was a blarsted cat!"

      He had not seen one since he left Charlestown a year before.

      He walked to the loop-hole and looked far down from the projecting wall and along the parapet of the curtain and the scarp to the opposite bastion with its tower-like block-house.

      Nothing—all quiet as the grave or the desert. He could hear the river sing; he could see in the light of the stars, and a mere flinder of a moon, the clods of earth on the ground below—naught else. For the douce mignonne, with her back all handsomely humped, had suddenly sprung aside and fled down the interior slope of the rampart into the parade and over to the cook's quarters neighboring the kitchen. She nosed gleefully about among pots and kettles, feeling very much at home and civilized to the verge of luxury; she pried stealthily, every inch a cat, into the arrangements for to-morrow's breakfast, with a noiseless step and a breathless purr, until suddenly a tin pan containing beans was tumultuously overturned, being within the line of an active spring. For the douce fillette had caught a mouse, which few sweet little girls are capable of doing;—a regular domestic fireside mouse, a thing which the douce fillette had not seen in many weeks.

      The stir in the neighboring cabin did not affright Kitty, and when the officers' cook, a veritable African negro, suddenly appeared with an ebony face and the rolling whites of astonished eyes, she exhibited her capture and was rewarded by a word of commendation which she quite understood, although it was as outlandish as the gutturals of Willinawaugh.

      When the night was nearly spent, a great star, splendidly blazing in the sorceries of a roseate haze, seemed to conjure into the blackness a cold glimmer of gray light above the high, bleak, serrated summit line of the mountains of the eastern horizon, showing here and there white blank intervals, that presently were revealed as stark snowy domes rising into the wintry silence of a new day. The resonant bugle suddenly sounded the reveillé along the far winding curves of the river, rousing greetings of morning from many a mountain crag, and before the responsive echoes of the forest were once more mute the parade was full of the commotion elicited by the beating of the drums; shadowy military figures were falling in line, and the brisk authoritative ringing voice of the first sergeant was calling the roll in each company.

      And on the doorstep of Odalie's cabin, when Josephine opened the door, sat the douce mignonne with her most babified expression on her face, now and again mewing noiselessly, going through the motions of grief, and cuddling down in infantile style when with wild babbling cries of endearment the little girl swooped up maternally the renegade cat.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsK CwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT/2wBDAQMEBAUEBQkFBQkUDQsNFBQUFBQU FBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBT/wAARCAeoBXgDAREA AhEBAxEB/8QAHQAAAgMAAwEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAgMAAQQGBwgFCf/EAGEQAAIBAwMCBAMFBQQECAkC FwECAwAEERIhMRNBBSJRYQYUcQcjMoGRCEKhscEVJNHwM1Lh8RYXNGJyc6KyJTZDgoOSk6OzwtMY JnR1w9I3U2NkJzVEVGXjRlVWhJSkxP/EABsBAAMBAAMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAgMEBQYH/8QARhEB AAMAAQMDAgMFBgUDAgENAQACESESMUEDIlEEYQUycROBscHRBhQzQpGhIzRScuEVYvAkU/EWQ4KS oiVjNcJEc4Oy/9oADAMBAAIRAxEAPwDsbQomsFm4UYGB2Irw/hyfZXBqWiGs08KW7MTBlLAcU+p

СКАЧАТЬ