United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Mrs Handover, requested to prepare tea for a semi-ceremonious occasion, was at once beset with misgivings, and the first sight of the strangers plunged her into profound despondency. She consulted her indifferent relative, Buncombe; had he any inkling of the possibility that Mr. Rolfe was about to change his condition?
Handover discoursed at large upon her dubious prospects. At the close of the Interview, he gave her a cheque for ten pounds, concealed in an envelope. 'A little present of course, I shall be hearing of you every good wish On the eve of his marriage day he stood in the dismantled rooms, at once joyful and heavy at heart.
For a few weeks Rolfe was waited upon by a charwoman, whom he paid extravagantly for a maximum of dirt and discomfort; then the unsatisfactory person fell ill, and, whilst cursing his difficulties, Harvey was surprised by a visit from Mrs. Handover, who made an unexpected suggestion would Mr. Rolfe accept her services in lieu of the charwoman's, paying her whatever he had been accustomed to give?
Marshal of the Palace Duroc, after telling us what we were to do, had all the Austrian flags which we had brought from Bregenz secretly replaced in the lodgings which Massy and I occupied; then, some hours later, when the Emperor was in conversation with Count Haugwitz in his study, we re-enacted the ceremony of the handover of the flags in exactly the same way as it had been done on the first occasion.
In the house where I live there is a decent woman who I dare say would be willing to look after them for the present. Will you leave this entirely in my hands? 'I am ashamed I don't know how to thank you. 'No time shall be lost. He rose. 'If Mrs. Handover will help us, I will bring her here; then I shall see you again. In any case, of course, I will come back there will be other business.
And so on, and so on, in one journal after another, in edition upon edition. Harvey Rolfe read them till he was weary, listened to the gossip of the club till he was nauseated. He went home at length with a headache, and, having carefully avoided contact with Buncombe or Mrs Handover, made an effort to absorb himself in a volume of Gregorovius, which was at present his study.
The proposal startled him. Mrs. Handover seemed to belong pretty much to his own rank of life; he was appalled at the thought of bidding her scrub floors and wash plates; and indeed it had begun to dawn upon him that, for a man with more than nine hundred a year, he was living in a needlessly uncomfortable way. On his reply that he thought of removing, Mrs.
The topmost storey Buncombe assigned to relatives of his own a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Handover, with a sickly grownup son, who took some part in the truss business.
Handover's present condition of vagabond pauper might be traceable to his marriage with a woman who had never learnt the elements of domestic duty. Thoroughly well-meaning, Mrs. Handover was the most incompetent of housewives. Yet such was Harvey Rolfe's delicacy, and so intense his moral cowardice, that year after year he bore with Mrs.
Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight.
Word Of The Day