#original_high_speech Good day to you all! Here is an extract from the short story 'A Son's Veto' from Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy; a rather sad one. As all classical literature, these short stories are particularly rich with florid language. So read this extract to learn a few more graceful words that might embellish your speech and let you have a broader variety of English vocabulary to choose from as you please as well as better understand high-flown speech and text whenever you may come by any. My supportive glossary is there to help you simplify the task; however, you might want to check the definitions of some of the words with a dictionary. Supportive glossary: 🔹repugnance – отвращение, антипатия 🔹to plead – упрашивание 🔹suit – ухаживание 🔹peremptoriness – решительность 🔹undergraduate – студент 🔹to ordain – посвящать в духовных сан 🔹encumbrance – помеха 🔹ascendency – власть, господство 🔹devotion – чтение молитв 🔹to bid – повелевать 🔹clerical – клерикальный, церковный 🔹to oust – устранять 🔹idyllic – идиллический 🔹fruiterer – торговец фруктами 🔹greengrocer – торговец овощами и фруктами 🔹lameness – хромота 🔹thoroughfare – главная дорога It was dropped for months; renewed again; abandoned under his repugnance; again attempted; and thus the gentle creature reasoned and pleaded till four or five long years had passed. Then the faithful Sam revived his suit with some peremptoriness. Sophy’s son, now an undergraduate, was down from Oxford one Easter, when she again opened the subject. As soon as he was ordained, she argued, he would have a home of his own, wherein she, with her bad grammar and her ignorance, would be an encumbrance to him. Better obliterate her as much as possible. He showed a more manly anger now, but would not agree. She on her side was more persistent, and he had doubts whether she could be trusted in his absence. But by indignation and contempt for her taste he completely maintained his ascendency; and finally taking her before a little cross and altar that he had erected in his bedroom for his private devotions, there bade her kneel, and swear that she would not wed Samuel Hobson without his consent. ‘I owe this to my father!’ he said. The poor woman swore, thinking he would soften as soon as he was ordained and in full swing of clerical work. But he did not. His education had by this time sufficiently ousted his humanity to keep him quite firm; though his mother might have led an idyllic life with her faithful fruiterer and greengrocer, and nobody have been anything the worse in the world. Her lameness became more confirmed as time went on, and she seldom or never left the house in the long southern thoroughfare, where she seemed to be pining her heart away. ‘Why mayn’t I say to Sam that I’ll marry him? Why mayn’t I?’ she would murmur plaintively to herself when nobody was near.