United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Miss Apperthwaite allowed her noticeable lashes to cover her eyes for an instant, then looked up again. "A Mr. Beasley," she said. "Not the Honorable David Beasley!" I exclaimed. "Yes," she returned, with a certain gravity which I afterward wished had checked me. "Do you know him?" "Not in person," I explained. "You see, I've written a good deal about him.
Apperthwaite had caught the Mansard fever of the late 'Seventies, and the building-disease, once fastened upon him, had never known a convalescence, but, rather, a series of relapses, the tokens of which, in the nature of a cupola and a couple of frame turrets, were terrifyingly apparent. Mrs. Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer.
Apperthwaite died, and left her and her mother stranded high and dry with nothing to live on. David had everything in the world to give her and STILL she wouldn't! And then, one day, she came up here and told me she'd broken it off. Said she couldn't stand it to be engaged to David Beasley another minute!" "But why?"
Apperthwaite's back porch was opened and Miss Apperthwaite, bearing a saucer of milk, issued therefrom, followed, hastily, by a very white, fat cat, with a pink ribbon round its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed, voracious eyes uplifted to the saucer.
She was of a larger, fuller, more striking type than Mrs. Apperthwaite, a bolder type, one might put it though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs. Apperthwaite without being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. Only one other of my own sex was present at the lunch-table, a Mr.
And I'm glad of it, and thank the Lord he's put a few like that into this talky world! David Beasley's smile is better than acres of other people's talk. My Providence! Wouldn't anybody, just to look at him, know that he does better than talk? He THINKS! The trouble with Ann Apperthwaite was that she was too young to see it.
I went into the library, and there sat Dowden contemplatively playing bridge with two of the elderly ladies and Miss Apperthwaite. The last-mentioned person quite took my breath away. There was a sort of splendor about her.
And he just comes and sits, she said, 'and sits and sits and sits and sits! And I can't bear it any longer, and I've told him so." "Poor Mr. Beasley," I said. "I think, 'Poor Ann Apperthwaite!" retorted my cousin.
"He hasn't any daughter," I said, and stepped back to the hooded figure I had been too absorbed in our quest to notice. It was Miss Apperthwaite. She had thrown a loose cloak over her head and shoulders; but enveloped in it as she was, and crested and epauletted with white, I knew her at once. There was no mistaking her, even in a blizzard.
How curious that is!" "Why?" asked Miss Apperthwaite. "It seems too big for one man," I answered; "and I've always had the impression Mr. Beasley was a bachelor." "Yes," she said, rather slowly, "he is." "But of course he doesn't live there all alone," I supposed, aloud, "probably he has " "No. There's no one else except a couple of colored servants." "What a crime!" I exclaimed.
Word Of The Day