Explore "Mistress Betty Carew" by Mary Gaunt on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"A veil to draw 'twixt God His law And Man's infirmity, A shadow kind to dumb and blind The shambles where we die."
IT HAD BEEN a breathless day. All the windows in the little town at Sydney Cove were gaping open for the sea breeze that had not come. The summer had been hot, but this first day of March the thermometer had been higher than it had ever been, and the officers of the New South Wales Corps, who were not as a rule given to looking upon Botany Bay as a Paradise, were more sure than ever that there was not a sheet of brown paper between it and regions which are not, as a rule, mentioned in polite society. Most of them were assembled as usual at the Rum Puncheon, but the long table and some of the settles had been moved outside as soon as the red hot sun had sunk out of sight over the ridge to the west, and those of them who had energy enough sat up with their shirts open at the throat, and their wigs, if they wore them, tossed on the table, while the rest sprawled in listless attitudes on the dried-up grass by the roadway.