United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Laird motioned him to a chair, and asked abruptly. "Where have you been all day, son?" "Well, I represented the clan at church this morning, and, after luncheon here, I went down to visit the Brents at the Sawdust Pile. Stayed for dinner. Old Caleb's in rather bad shape mentally and physically, and I tried to cheer him up. Nan sang for me quite like old times."
He breathed a sigh of relief when, the outcry failing to materialize, he decided the Brents were too poor to maintain a dog; whereupon he filled his pipe, lighted it, leaned up against the house, and, for the space of an hour, stood entranced, for from Caleb Brent's poor shanty there floated the voice of an angel, singing to the notes of a piano. "Glory be!" murmured the amazed Daniel.
Carlyon to the White Cottage, much to the chagrin of the Ross girls, whose homeward route took them through Rotherwood, and who also had a seat to spare. Malcolm had a dim suspicion that Elizabeth had connived at this arrangement. "You had better go with the Brents if they ask you," she had said earlier in the evening, but he had not heard Mr. Carlyon's reply.
In 1760 he bargained with one Clifton for "a tract called Brents," of eighteen hundred and six acres, but after the agreement was closed the seller, "under pretence of his wife not consenting to acknowledge her right of dower wanted to disengage himself ... and by his shuffling behavior convinced me of his being the trifling body represented."
He loaded his pipe and was silent, for, after the fashion of the aged, he dared assume that his youthful auditor would understand just how the Brents regarded him. "Well, my heart's lighter for our talk, lad," he declared presently. "If you don't mind, I'll have a little nap." Donald, grateful for the dismissal, returned to the kitchen, where Nan was preparing the vegetables.
The man and woman seemed to have inherited in masculine and feminine form respectively the evil tendency of their race, sharing in common the principles, though manifesting them in different ways, of sullen passion, voluptuousness and recklessness. The history of the Brents had been something similar, but showing the causes of decadence in their aristocratic and not their plebeian forms.
I hoped that nothing would come of it, but I might have known better. When the redskins begin to stir there's sure to be mischief before they're quiet again." The color had somewhat left Mr. Welch's cheeks as the hunter spoke. "This is bad news, indeed, Pearson," he said gravely. "Are you sure about the attack on the Brents?" "Sartin sure," the hunter said.
The Brents were accorded by the whole section of the country a unique social dominance, and had ever held themselves as high above the yeoman class to which Margaret Delandre belonged, as a blue-blooded Spanish hidalgo out-tops his peasant tenantry. The Delandres had an ancient record and were proud of it in their way as the Brents were of theirs.
They bade her send for Miss Porter, and included her in their warm-hearted invitation; but by the time Maidie was able to get a word in edgewise on her own account, and begged them to come and meet Mrs. Dr. Wells and the Red Cross sisterhood, they demurred. The general, in Marion's brief absence, had expressed his opinion of that official head, and the Brents had evidently accepted his views.
She had discovered that he had planned with composed steadiness that misleading impressions should be given to servants and village people. When the Brents returned to the vicarage, she had observed, with terror, that for some reason they stiffened, and looked askance when the Ffolliotts were mentioned. "I am afraid, Lady Anstruthers, that Mr. Ffolliott was a great mistake," Mrs. Brent said once.
Word Of The Day