“I am not magnificent,” she said mildly, wishing that she had put on another dress. “You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive,” her father rejoined.  “You look as if you had eighty thousand a year.”

Marian broke up their talk, and told Mr. Townsend—whom she treated as if she were already married, and he had become her cousin—to run away to her mother, who had been wishing for the last half-hour to introduce him to Mr. Almond. “We shall meet again!” he said to Catherine as he left her, and Catherine thought it a very original speech.

On the contrary, for fear of being unjust to her, he did his duty with exemplary zeal, and recognised that she was a faithful and affectionate child.  Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and in the fulness of time he got used to it.  He satisfied himself that he had expected nothing, though, indeed, with a certain oddity of reasoning.  “I expect nothing,” he said to himself, “so that if she gives me a surprise, it will be all clear again.  If she doesn’t, it will be no loss.”  This was about the time Catherine had reached her eighteenth year, so that it will be seen her father had not been precipitate.  At this time she seemed not only incapable of giving surprises; it was almost a question wh

“When Catherine is about seventeen,” he said to himself, “Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man with a moustache is in love with her.  It will be quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine.  But Lavinia will take it up, and talk to her about it; perhaps, even, if her taste for clandestine operations doesn’t prevail with her, she will talk to me about it.  Catherine won’t see it, and won’t believe it, fortunately for her peace of mind; poor Catherine isn’t romantic.”

Should his sis-ter earn money, a girl who was still a seventeen-year-old child, whose earlier life style had been so very delightful that it had consisted of dressing herself nicely, sleeping in late, helping around the house, taking part in a few mod-est enjoyments and, above all, playing the violin?

is sister often asked his father whether he wanted to have a beer and gladly offered to fetch it herself, and when his father was silent,

If she did not do it on her own, he would sooner starve to death than call her attention to the fact, although he had a really powerful urge to move beyond the couch, throw himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her for something or other good to eat.

Earlier, when the door had been barred, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door and when the others had obviously been opened during the day, no one came any more,

Now, perhaps this reading aloud, about which his sister always spoken and written to him, had recently fallen out of their general routine. But it was so still all around, in spite of the fact that the apartment was certainly not empty.

He pushed himself slowly toward the door, still groping awkwardly with his feelers, which he now learned to value for the first time, to check what was happening there.

The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet

His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he wished to push Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room, covered his eyes with his hands, and cried so that his mighty breast shook.

Mr. Manager! Take it easy on my parents! There is really no basis for the criticisms which you are now making against me, and really nobody has said a word to me about that.

It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to push himself up a little, and it fell by itself.

an-swers in both directions, ‘I’ll be ready right away.’

He slid back again into his earlier position. ‘This getting up early,’ he thought, ‘makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep.

ne morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his ar-mour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sec-tions. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circum-ference, flickered helplessly before his eyes