#nothingmustbe

[waysofhittingback]

@nothingmustbe asked:

|     “ I wish he’d never met her. ”

“ i’ve thought about that a lot. he would’ve married daisy. ” his voice had an oddly hollow quality about it, and he sounded a bit bitter.

he didn’t seem to be talking so much now as thinking aloud.

“ that’s how it always should’ve gone, y’know? jeremy marrying daisy. ”

he licked his lips. his eyes had squeezed down to slits, and they looked very catlike in the candlelight.

“ then we could’ve got married. you and i could’ve got married, i mean. ”

he stopped here. he appeared to be listening to something.

“ b’lieve that’s mary. have you met her yet? ”

he shot a look at her——at clowance, that was.

“ i mean, met her properly. you’d like her, she’s like violet. ”

[bornunderablackmoon]

@nothingmustbe asked:

|     “ I just meant he is not always so loquacious. ”

“ hm? your handsome sailor lad, y’mean? ”

he sat across from her with his legs stretched out at odd angles.

“ well, you mustn’t take this in the wrong way, m’dear, but——i hadn’t thought so. ”

his eyebrows vaulted upwards, and he rubbed at his bad one with the toe of the boot opposite it.

“ y’know, i b’lieve i talked circles around him the first time i met him. ”

he screwed his eyes up, as if in some effort of recollection——meanwhile, he gave his jaw a bit of a lazy scratch.

“ of course——i had thought afterwards that he mightn’t have been partial to my choice of topics, but now i’m thinking it may be me he’s not partial to. ”

looking back on it, he couldn’t remember what his choice of topics had been, but——there had been a pretty barmaid, he fancied.

in any case, the prospect didn’t appear to trouble him too terribly much, though——he did pause. then——after a moment, he leveled a look at her.

one which was distinctly unprincipled.

“ perhaps i should’ve waited to call upon you until he was safely back on the high seas, eh? ”

he winked at her. it was a humorous sort of a gesture, it seemed, but——not altogether lacking in sincerity.

“ then we could’ve had the house to ourselves. ”

[stranger-from-the-sea]

          “Which of ‘em was it that caught ye across the eye?”

[born-under-a-black-moon]

cont. from (x)

“Well, damn me------I shall do my best not to disappoint you.” He sat up in his chair a little, clearing his throat, making efforts to put on some semblance of a serious face.

“A man wished to have something original on his wife’s headstone, and hit upon ‘Lord, she was Thine’. He had his own ideas regarding the size of the letters and the space between words, and gave instructions to the stonemason especially. The latter carried them out all right------except that he could not for the life of him fit in the ‘E’ in ‘Thine’.”

[sentiment-or-profit]

cont. from (x)

“There is a matter of some small importance regarding your husband’s finances that I had hoped to discuss with you. Generally speaking, of course, I would bring it to his attention directly, but I am told he will yet be at sea for some weeks.” He paused. “You are enjoying the evening?”

[laissez-faireism]

He jogged a little to catch up with her. “No shoes again—?” He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

“Mama shan’t be pleased.”

[born-under-a-black-moon]

“You fell? What, down the stairs?”

[stranger-from-the-sea]

          “Yer brother’s up the pole. Got a sick chicken he won’t do away with. Says it’s a pet------chickens ain’t pets, I told him. Holy Mary! He’s more sentimental than an old maid, he is.”