Читать книгу The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure онлайн

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She was Julia Armstrong, and, strange to say, an old love of his—I mean, he had lost his heart to her a little time before he went to sea, when he was scarcely more than a schoolboy. Then he went to sea, and when he came home she had gone somewhere on a visit, and so of the next voyage; but when he returned from his fourth trip round the world he met her, and found the old beautiful charm again in her; but in a week she left to occupy some post as a governess thirty miles away, and when they met again it was here by this roadside.

What had captivated the young fellow with this girl who lay unconscious in the fold of his arm? She had a pleasant, interesting face, beheld even through the death pallor that lay upon it; but she was not beautiful or even pretty. Her hair was abundant and fair, inclining, as you might even judge by that light, to auburn. But it was not her face nor hair, it was her figure that had excited admiration into passion in the young sailor. Her shape and involuntary poses were saucy and perfect beyond expression. She always carried her hat on one side of her head—"cock-billed," as the sailors call it; she had a trick of planting her hands on her hips; her limbs were beautifully shaped, and her short skirts exposed as much or little of them as her figure required. No dancer of exquisite art could have played her legs as this girl did, yet all her movements were involuntary and unconscious, and therein lay the sweetness, for had a hint of study been visible in her motions the whole maidenly and fairy-like illusion would have hardened into acting.