massingbird's

Updated: April 30, 2025

"Frederick Massingbird's." "How perfectly absurd!" he presently exclaimed. "True," said Mr. Bourne. "So absurd that, were it not for a circumstance which has happened to-night, I scarcely think I should have brought myself to repeat it. My conviction is, that some person bearing an extraordinary resemblance to Frederick Massingbird is walking about to terrify the neighbourhood."

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

The boy answered. But he answered below his breath; as if he scarcely dared to speak the name aloud. His mother partially caught it. "Whose?" she exclaimed, in a sharp voice, her tone changing. And Dan spoke a little louder. "It was Mr. Frederick Massingbird's!" Old Matthew Frost sat in his room at the back of the kitchen. It was his bedroom and sitting-room combined.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

I have had many ups and downs, Lionel, but somehow I have hitherto always managed to alight on my legs; and I believe it's because I let other folks get along tit for tat, you see. A fellow who is for ever putting his hindering spoke in the wheel of others, is safe to get hindering spokes put into his. True enough. With all Mr. John Massingbird's failings, his heart was not a bad one.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

He knew quite well that, according to the laws of God and man, she was Frederick Massingbird's wife; not his. He should never think when the time came of disputing Frederick Massingbird's claim to her. But, what would she do? how would she act?

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

"And don't you think, sir, as you might be able to do the same thing still?" "No, Davies. I have been displaced from Verner's Pride, and from all power connected with it. I have no more right to interfere with the working of the estate than you have. You must make the best of things until Mr. Massingbird's return."

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

That, surely, could not be the solution! If he had taken Frederick Massingbird's wife to be his wife, he had done it in all innocence. Lionel spurned the notion as a preposterous one; nevertheless, a remembrance crossed him of the old days when the popular belief at Verner's Pride had been, that the younger of the Massingbirds was of a remarkably secretive and also of a revengeful nature.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

Fred Massingbird's dead, poor fellow; he died of fever three weeks after they landed; and you are master of Verner's Pride." Lionel Verner could scarcely believe in his own identity.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

"I am a foolish old man, given to ponder much over cause and effect to put two and two together, as we call it; and the day I first heard from your uncle that he had had good cause it was what he said for depriving you of Verner's Pride, I went home, and set myself to think. The will had been made just after John Massingbird's departure for Australia.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

But a few short weeks ago he had been in John Massingbird's place, in the very chair that he now sat in, never thinking to be removed from it during life. And now! what a change! "Why don't you smoke, Lionel?" asked John, setting light to his pipe by the readiest way that of thrusting it between the bars of the grate. "You did not care to smoke in the old days, I remember."

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride

"I was not going to run away." "How did I know that?" said Jan. "It's my last night of fun, and when I saw YOU I said to myself, 'I'll be caught. How are old Deb and Amilly?" "Much as usual. Deb's in a fever just now. She has heard that Fred Massingbird's back, and thinks Sibylla ought to leave Lionel on the strength of it." John laughed again.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Verner's Pride