Читать книгу The Siege of the Seven Suitors - Meredith Nicholson - Страница 20

I was aroused at six o'clock the next morning by the sound of gun-shots, and springing out of bed I beheld, in an open pasture beyond the stable-yard, the indomitable Miss Hollister engaged in the pleasing pastime of breaking clay pigeons with a fowling-piece. Her Swedish maid stood by with a formidable pad of paper, keeping score. A boy pulled the trap for her, and she threw up her gun and blazed away with a practised hand. Her small, slight, tense figure, awaiting the launching of the target, the quick up-bring of the gun as she sighted, and the pause, following the firing of the shot, in which she bent forward rigidly watching the result, were features of a picture which I would not have missed. My eye could not follow the curving disc in its flight, but when the shot told, the bursting clay made a little patch of dust in the air that was plainly visible from where I sat. Beyond the stable-roofs, on a broad stretch of pasture whose aftermath made a green field about her, and against a background of the more distant woods' tapestry, Miss Octavia Hollister was a figure to admire. And I will write it down here and be done with it, that it has been my good fortune to know many delightful women, but I have never known one more interesting or charming than Miss Octavia Hollister. The spirit of deathless youth was in her heart; and youth's gay pennants fluttered about her, as the reports of her gun fell cheerily upon the crisp morning air, a rebuke and a challenge to all indolent souls.