“You have taken root in the Beloved.
I love your golden branches
And the hundred graceful movements
Your body now makes each time
The wind, children and love come near.”
″ ‘But if you take my voice,’ said the little mermaid, ‘what will I have left?’
‘Your beautiful body,’ said the witch. ‘Your graceful walk and your lovely eyes. Speak with them and you will be able to capture a human heart.’ ”
“But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went. She kept ahead of every one the whole time; and yet she neither walked nor ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, while her feet twinkled past each other so fast that you could not see which was foremost; till every one asked the other who the strange women was; and all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that she must be in league with Tom.”
“As they came out from the shelter of the trees and the Great Meadows stretched before them, Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home?”