One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life! each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save.
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For still, the more he works, the moreDo his weak ankles swell.
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We’ll drink the wine till the cup is dry, and kiss the girls so they’ll not cry, and toss the dice until we fly to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows. We’ll dance all night while the moon runs free, and dandle the lasses upon our knee, and then you’ll ride along with me, to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows. We’ll sing all night, and drink all day, and on the girls we’ll spend our pay, and when it’s gone, then we’ll away, to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows. There’re some delight in ale and wine, and some in girls with ankles fine but my delight, yes, always mine, is to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows. We’ll toss the dice however they fall, and snuggle the girls be they short or tall, then follow young Mat whenever he calls, to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.
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As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone. She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them. 'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.' 'These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.' 'Men who died in battle?' 'No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.' 'These are just the ... unfound?' She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes. When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?' The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm. Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight. 'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.
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Weird theory #47: Islamic women can do kinky things with their ankles. That's why the Koran says they aren't supposed to reveal them in public.
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Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.
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