United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Seldom has the Queen City been so shocked; and many heavy hearts will to-day join in the wail of woe that goes up from the stricken family." Thus the bulletin ran, and surmise, consternation, and sorrow, were upon the lips of many men, women, and children in the Queen City. MELROSE, Lizzie Heartwell's home, was a manufacturing village in the northern part of a Southern State.
Mordecai had waited to welcome his daughter, and would consequently be late at his bank. "It's real late," said Leah, as she followed her father from the house. "I hear the Citadel clock striking ten. I must spend the morning with Lizzie." Then donning the light Leghorn hat that gave her a gypsy-like appearance, she started forth toward Rev. Dr. Heartwell's unpretentious house.
Heartwell's friends and acquaintances as a most accomplished servant and a most miserable stammerer. "Very well; please show me the way," replied Leah, repressing a smile. Up two flights of stairs she followed the dark guide, and when they arrived at Lizzie's room, whose door stood ajar, he said, with a flourish of his right hand; "M-m-iss M-m-mordecai, M-m-iss L-l-lizzie."
Lizzie Heartwell's friends still lingered upon the inviting deck, reluctant to speak the parting word that must so surely come. Dr. and Mrs.
"It's all over now; school-days are ended, and I am acknowledged a young lady, I suppose," thought Leah half-consciously, as she aroused at length from slumber. Then the thought came that it was the last day of Lizzie Heartwell's sojourn in the Queen City; and Leah sprang from her repose with a new and powerful impulse.
Trembling with fatigue and deep-hidden emotion, Leah at length stood at the door of Dr. Heartwell's house, awaiting the answer of the porter. The door opened. "M-m-miss L-l-lizzie s-s-says c-c-come right u-up stairs, M-m-iss M-m-ordecai," stuttered out the polished black Hannibal who attended the door, known throughout the large circle of Dr.
Heartwell's married life been spent, and Lizzie's young days, too, had passed in their quiet uneventful home at Melrose. But at the age of fifteen, and three years prior to the opening of this story, under the kindly guardianship of her uncle, Lizzie Heartwell entered the popular finishing school of Madam Truxton.
"An' bless de Lord, is it Miss Lizzie?" said the good-natured woman, as the sound of Lizzie Heartwell's voice fell upon her ear in the kindly spoken salutation. "An' w'at will you have to-day, chile?" "Some bananas, Maum Cinda two for me, and two for my friend here, Miss Bertha Levy."
Word Of The Day