United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was reading it, and saying it quite softly to himself; and I felt that if you saw him, you would send for Dr. Spraggs." "Ring the bell at once, dear, if you will be kind enough. I hope there is a fresh horse in the stable. Or the best way would be to send the jumping-car; then he would be certain to come back at once." "Do as you like. I begin to think that we ought to take proper precautions.
She was a virgin with a taste for scribbling, which commonly took the form of lengthy letters written to those she thought worthy of her correspondence. Miss Spraggs was much courted by her relations, who were genuinely proud of her local literary reputation. Also, let it be said, that she had the disposal of capital bringing in five hundred a year.
The bare wind-beaten inn, all shingles without and blueberry pie within, was "exclusive," parochial, Bostonian; and the Spraggs wore through the interminable weeks in blank unmitigated isolation. The incomprehensible part of it was that every other woman in the hotel was plain, dowdy or elderly and most of them all three.
"Well, I guess I don't need anybody to do that: I can do it myself," she said, with the good-humoured curtness that was the habitual note of intercourse with the Spraggs. Ralph sat down beside her and laid a caressing touch on her shoulder. "No, you can't, you foolish child.
She had heard the call of the Atlantic seaboard, and the next summer found the Spraggs at Skog Harbour, Maine. Even now Undine felt a shiver of boredom as she recalled it. That summer had been the worst of all.
But he always ended by walking home alone and tip-toeing upstairs through the sleeping house lest he should wake his boy.... On Saturday afternoons, when the business world was hurrying to the country for golf and tennis, he stayed in town and took Paul to see the Spraggs.
The good woman was ignorant that the starvation wages which her husband's companies paid were directly responsible for the existence of the local evil she deplored, and which she did her best to eradicate. Miss Spraggs, Hilda Devitt's elder sister, lived with the family at Melkbridge House.
Miss Spraggs made two or three further efforts to take a rise out of Mavis; in each case, such was the younger woman's naturalness and self-possession, that it was the would be persecutor who appeared at a disadvantage.
Miss Spraggs talked in whispers to her sister of "that scheming adventuress," as she called Mavis. Victoria chastened agitated expectation with resignation; while Lowther sat with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. At last a ring was heard at the front door bell, at which Devitt and Lowther went out to welcome bride and bridegroom.
"I've always a healthy appetite, whatever I do," remarked Mavis, who was fondly regarding the black spaniel. Then Montague Devitt, Lowther, and Miss Spraggs entered the drawing-room, to all of whom Mavis was introduced. The men were quite cordial, too cordial to a girl who, after all, was seeking a dependant's place, thought Mrs Devitt.
Word Of The Day