United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I promised to set a trap and buy a cat before evening, and was closing the door upon the subject, being already rather late at the office, when the expression of Gertrude Fellows's face detained me. "If I were you, I wouldn't really buy a very expensive trap, Mr. Hotchkiss. It will be a waste of money, I am afraid. I heard the noise that disturbed Cousin Alison"; and she sighed.
The young ladies would not have had the old lady guess it for worlds, but truth compels me to own that all that week they improved every opportunity furtively to study Mrs. Fellows's gait and manner, with a view to perfecting their parts.
The sound continued with more or less intermission till daybreak. Allis fell asleep, but I spent the time in appropriate reflections. Early in the morning I removed the button from Miss Fellows's door. She never knew anything about it. I believe, however, that I had the fairness to exculpate her in my secret heart from any trickish connection with the disturbances of that night.
In August of the summer following Miss Fellows's visit, and the manifestations in my house at Atkinsville, I was startled one pleasant morning, while sitting in the office of a medium in Washington Street in Boston, by a singularly unpleasant communication.
Eight o'clock was the hour at which the old folks' party began, and the reader will need a fresh introduction to the company which was assembled at that time in Mary Fellows's parlor. Mary sat by her grandmother, who from time to time regarded her in a half-puzzled manner, as if it required an effort of her reasoning powers to reassure her that the effect she saw was an illusion.
They look into the ward and see the mothers and sisters and wives camped round the beds, and go back into the bunk feeling that the ward doesn't belong to them. The eldest Sister said to me yesterday: "Shut the door, nurse; there's Captain Fellows's father. I don't want him fussing round."
Grandmother Fellows's wardrobe was pretty thoroughly rummaged under that good-natured old lady's superintendence, and many were the queer effects of old garments upon young figures which surprised the steady-going mirror in her quiet chamber. "I 'm afraid I can never depend on it again," said Mrs. Fellows. She had promised to be at the party.
Fellows's babies on the other, it's enough to wear away her strength. I won't have it so! This isn't the place for her, and do you bring her up to my house to-morrow." "The babies don't usually cry as much as they have to-day," said Gertrude, smiling; "and as to the ocean, Emily loves dearly to hear the waves rolling in." "Knew she did!" said the doctor.
I took out the fire-board and looked up the chimney; I took out the register and looked down the furnace-pipe; I ransacked the garret and the halls; finally, I examined Miss Fellows's door, it was locked as I had left it, upon the outside; and that locked door was the only means of egress from the room, unless the occupant fancied that of jumping from a two-story window upon a broad flight of stone steps.
Nellie flatly refused to be made up fat, and Jessie as flatly, while both the girls had too much reverence for the sweet dignity of Mary Fellows's beauty to consent to her taking the part, and so the idea was given up.
Word Of The Day