"Fools you are; be fools for ever"

Frank Merrill

1893

Source: facing II, 288

Brown University Rockefeller Library copy

[For passage illustrated, see below]

"She pressed my hand with hers"

"In the name of God, Sir, let me go!"

"He gave me a little tap very nicely upon my shoulder"

Scanned image and text by George P. Landow

[This image may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose.]

Now Sir Ensor Doone was leaning back upon his brown chair-rail, which was built like a triangle, as in old farmhouses (from one of which it had come, no doubt, free from expense or gratitude); and as I spoke he coughed a little; and he sighed a good deal more; and perhaps his dying heart desired to open time again, with such a lift of warmth and hope as he descried in our eyes, and arms. I could not understand him then; any more than a baby playing with his grandfather's spectacles; nevertheless I wondered whether, at his time of life, or rather on the brink of death, he was thinking of his youth and pride.

"Fools you are; be fools for ever," said Sir Ensor Doone, at last; while we feared to break his thoughts, but let each other know our own, with little ways of pressure; "it is the best thing I can wish you; boy and girl, be boy and girl, until you have grandchildren."

Partly in bitterness he spoke, and partly in pure weariness, and then he turned so as not to see us; and his white hair fell, like a shroud, around him. — Chapter 40

References

Blackmore, R. D. Lorna Doone. 2 vols. New York and Boston: Thomas V. Crowell, 1893.

Last modified 25 April 2006