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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

He met a Miss Castries--
d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the d' for
administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically that he worked. Understand clearly that there was not
a breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--not a shadow of
a breath. She was good and very lovely--possessed what innocent
people at home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-black
hair growing low down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and
big violet eyes under eyebrows as black and as straight as the
borders of a Gazette Extraordinary when a big man dies. But--but--
but--. Well, she was a VERY sweet girl and very pious, but for many
reasons she was "impossible." Quite so. All good Mammas know what
"impossible" means. It was obviously absurd that Peythroppe should
marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx at the base of her finger-
nails said this as plainly as print. Further, marriage with Miss
Castries meant marriage with several other Castries--Honorary
Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs.


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