United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Farther along, on another clearing, stands a square building labelled "Office," and still farther on, guarded by sentinel trees and encircled by wide piazzas, sprawls a low-roofed bungalow, its main entrance level with a boardwalk ending in the lake. This was Monteith's home.
"Oh, Miss Blake told me who you were and where you lived," Bertram replied most innocently: his tone was pure candour; "and when I went round to your lodgings just now, they explained that you were out, but that I should probably find you at Mrs. Monteith's; so of course I came on here."
Monteith's mother was old and feeble; she would die some day, then "we shall see what we shall see" then, of course, he would need someone to preside over his home; and who so well fitted to adorn it as she, the acknowledged beauty of the town?
He did not put these thoughts into words; neither did he whisper them even in the ears of Podvine or Monteith the two men who understood him best and who guyed him the least especially Monteith, who never forgot that his college chum was his guest. He confided them instead to Monteith's big, red-faced foreman half Canadian, part French, and the rest of him Irish who was another source of wonder.
Monteith's letter, however, seemed to come at a time when he really needed a more virile and bracing life than was offered by the others. Here was a chance to redeem his reputation. Lumber camps meant big men doing big things things reeking with danger, such as falling trees, forest fires and log jams.
Winch himself, on Mark's own pressure of the outside bell, had opened the door of the apartment an indication then, it sufficiently appeared, that Sunday afternoons were servants', or attendants', or even trained nurses' holidays. It had also marked the stage of his convalescence, and to that extent after his first flush of surprise had but smoothed Monteith's way.
Then with a pretty pout: "Naughty man, you never asked me to try them." "Suppose I ask you now," he said, and even while he spoke he said to himself, "Edna Winters would never have done that." Miss Percival needed no urging; she was soon seated in triumph by Mr. Monteith's side, the envy of many another city belle.
Monteith's eyes now brightened-the paleness left his cheek-and with a firmer step, as if suddenly relieved of a heavy load, he called a servant to prepare Sir William Wallace's attendants. While Wallace shook him by the hand, Monteith, in a low and solemn voice, exhorted him to caution respecting the box. "Remember," added he, "the penalty that hangs over him who looks into it."
Covering this bare spot are huge piles of sawed lumber Monteith's axe-razors did the shaving surrounding an enormous mill surmounted by a smokestack of wrought iron topped with a bird-cage spark arrester, the whole flanked by a runway emerging from the lake, up which climb in mournful procession the stately bodies of fallen monarchs awaiting the cutting irony of the saw.
I went to the encyclopædia and found that the name of the knife was spelled kris and pronounced creese. The day-dreams which seemed impossible in the days of Monteith's Geography have since been realized.
Word Of The Day