Explore "Ultima Thule" by Henry Handel Richardson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He had enjoined her to patience and patient she was--though week ran into week and month to month, in all of which time she knew nothing of what was happening behind the scenes, or what strings Ocock was pulling to upset the cumbrous machinery of medical law. She just dragged on from day to day, in ignorance and suspense. But her nerves often got the better of her, and then the children felt her heavy, hasty hand. While, in her official capacity, so set did she become on her "rights," so unblushing in making her voice heard, that her name grew to be a by-word in the service. "That tartar at G.G.?" (which was the morse call for Gymgurra) was how she was familiarly spoken of.
In this dreary time, when her narrow walls oppressed her to breathlessness, but from which there was no possible escape for her, one piece of good fortune came her way. The house at Shortlands found a tenant; and so the money which she had laboriously scraped together for the following quarter's rent would not be needed. Hence when at last the tide began to turn, with the substitution of "highly dangerous," and "a most risky experiment," for the maddening "impossible," she actually had a small sum in hand with which to make her preparations. And she set about these forthwith; building on her recently acquired knowledge of men and their ways. She could look for no complete VOLTE FACE on their part. Only in this grudging, half-hearted fashion would their consent be given.