Halves Author:James Payn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. OUR LITTLE DINNER-PARTY. I Must have been very much in love in those days, for I remember that, throughout that long drive to Morecambe Bay, t... more »he absurdity of my errand—the fact that I had a large live crab in the dog-cart, which was neither to be eaten, nor sold, nor given away, but was to be placed on a retired plateau of sand, near stones, to which he might betake himself, if so inclined—did not occupy my mind, though humour was by nature welcome to it. I had laughed when my uncle had intrusted me with the task, and I laughed again when I had accomplished it : when the huge ungainlyobject of my care was squatting on the sand in front of me, so astonished to find himself there, instead of on a fishmonger's slab, that for a minute or two he could do nothing but stare and slobber, and presently, still staring, disappeared in the wet sand, in a grave of his own digging; but for the most part I thought of nothing but Gertrude. Did she like shell-fish, I wondered, and should I be able to afford to give it her when we were married ? When those three years of apprenticeship should be over—no servitude like that which Jacob endured for his Rachel, but a blessed state of existence, since it would be passed in her society—and I should be a full-fledged attorney, and competent, if clients came, to mate with my angel. It would be necessary, perhaps, to live in a town, but in the summer time we should pass a month or two, at all events, in some beautiful district, such as that I was now traversing—perhaps that very one. Oh, to be driving her(instead of the crab) to the shore of the silver sea, that she might bathe there (a salt-water Undine), or to wander over the sparkling sands together (the sea-air could never make her bilious, as it did Aunt Eleanor) ; to be walking hom...« less