United States or Cocos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Ralphs and Mannings and Fortescues came down upon the raw inexperience, upon the blinking ignorance of the newcomer; and before her eyes were fairly open, before she knew what had happened, a new set of guides and controls, a new set of obligations and responsibilities and limitations, had replaced the old.
His old steward, Mannings, ran the household, although as he went through the form of laying the bills before his little mistress on the third of every month, she knew that the upkeep of the San Francisco house and the Burlingame villa ran into a small fortune a year. "It is not that I am threatened with financial disaster," Ruyler had said to her.
It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death grip of Thurtell ; and a score besides of famous crimes.
A youngish woman was working in the kitchen. The Mannings had taken one of the town's poor, who at this period were farmed out.
This place became noted for its roast beef and also for its corned beef and cabbage, which was said to be of most excellent flavor. Most famous of all the old oyster houses was Mannings, at the corner of Pine and Webb streets. He specialized in oysters and many of his dishes have survived to the present day.
But you kids have got to think about it. What's happened to us? What's happened to this old town? I want you to think about it." Little Jim took the dinner bucket and started for home. His father had not been talking on a topic new to the Mannings or to the Mannings' friends. Little Jim had been brought up to wonder what was the matter with his breed, what had happened to Exham.
When Little Jim was five, the Mannings had come back to Exham, with the hope of somehow, sometime, buying back the old farm. Little Jim passed the old farmhouse slowly. It was used for a storehouse for quarry supplies now. Yet it still was beautiful. Two great elms still shaded the wide portico. The great eaves still sheltered many paned windows.
He could only trust to luck and his own inventiveness, and hope that Lynch's delightfully unconscious easing of the situation would continue. The work was finished toward noon on the third day after the arrival of the Mannings, and all the connections hooked up.
"And Phil is over in Granite Basin. I neglected to tell you that he knows the location of the Mannings' camp, as well as I." Kitty was a little puzzled by the tone of his laughter, and by his words. She spoke gravely. "Perhaps I should tell you, Patches we have been such good friends, you and I Phil " "Yes!" he said. "Phil is nothing to me, Patches. I mean " "You mean in the way he wanted to be?"
The day before they left the old town, Jim tramped doggedly up the street toward the old Manning mansion. He had not been there since his father's death. When he reached the dooryard he stopped, pulled off his cap and stood looking at the doorway that had welcomed so many Mannings and sped so many more.
Word Of The Day