Читать книгу The Daughter of a Soldier: A Colleen of South Ireland онлайн

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On this special, most lovely day, Maureen happened to be a little tired as well as anxious. She had been rushing about since early morning, attending to Aunt Constance, helping the inferior servants, and doing what she could for old Pegeen. She felt that she had earned her rest under the trees. She had a very old and tattered book beside her. It had been given to her by her uncle, and was called Gulliver's Travels; it seemed to Maureen to be a most fascinating book, and when she told her uncle how she delighted in it, he informed her that on the occasion of her next birthday he would give her the Arabian Nights as a present. That birthday was four months off, it was true, but what mattered that when she had this priceless treasure to look forward to.

The summer at Templemore was ordinarily celebrated by a rich supply of fruit and vegetables, milk, butter, and eggs. The Reverend Patrick was a born gardener, and his strawberries were so fine that they scented the air as you passed them. In addition to the strawberries there were great gooseberries of every variety, raspberries as large as thimbles, also a fruit, not very well known now, called sugar-pears, other pears of every description, plums of every variety, apples innumerable, and peaches—oh, such peaches! In short, the summer of the year brought with it plenty and abundance. It resembled Joseph's fat kine, which were closely followed by the lean kine in the long sad winter.