Explore "Memoirs of a Midget" by Walter de la Mare on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Once more I sat down, but this time in the midst of what seemed to me a rather unpleasant silence, as if the room had grown colder: a silence which was broken only by the distant whistlings of a thrush. At one and the same moment both Mr. Pellew and Mr. Crimble returned to teacups which I should have supposed must have, by this time, been empty, and Lady Pollacke's widowed sister folded up her lorgnette.
"My dear Miss M.," said Mrs. Monnerie dryly, with an almost wicked ray of amusement in her deep-set eyes, "wherever the top of Beechwood Hill may be, and whatever supplies of food may be caught on its crest, there is no doubt that you have been provided with the means of defending yourself. But tell me now, what do you think, perhaps, Mr. Pellew's little ‘instruments' are? Or, better still -- mine? Am I a mollusc with a hard shell, or a scorpion with a sting?"