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Updated: June 15, 2025
Selldon thought regretfully of the comfortable easy chair that she usually enjoyed after dinner, and the ten minutes' nap, and the congenial needle-work. And Mark Shrewsbury thought of his chambers in Pump Court, and longed for his type-writer, and his books, and his swivel chair, and his favourite meerschaum.
Selldon talked to an empty-headed but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for something to say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing that Charles Dickens would often sit silent through the whole of dinner, observing quietly those about him, but that at dessert he would suddenly come to life and keep the whole table in roars of laughter.
Sigismund Zaluski, a Polish merchant, who is doing untold harm in the neighbourhood. He is a very clever, unscrupulous man, and has managed to take in almost every one." "Why, what is he? A swindler? Or a burglar in disguise, like the House on the Marsh fellow?" asked the author, with a little twinkle of amusement in his face. "Oh, much worse than that," said Mrs. Selldon, lowering her voice.
Selldon, though a most worthy and estimable person, was of a phlegmatic temperament; her sympathies were not easily aroused, her mind was lazy and torpid, in conversation she was unutterably dull. There were times when she was painfully conscious of this, and would have given much for the ceaseless flow of words which fell from the lips of her friend Mrs. Milton-Cleave.
"It is the strangest story I have heard for a long time." Just then there was a pause in the general conversation, and Mrs. Selldon took advantage of it to make the sign for rising, so that no more passed with regard to Zaluski.
But while he basked in his new happiness I travelled in my close stuffy envelope to Dulminster, and after having been tossed in and out of bags, shuffled, stamped, thumped, tied up, and generally shaken about, I arrived one morning at Dulminster Archdeaconry, and was laid on the breakfast table among other appetising things to greet Mrs. Selldon when she came downstairs.
Selldon, who had seen several authors and authoresses in her time, and knew that they were as a rule most ordinary, hum-drum kind of people, was quite prepared for her fate.
Selldon kneeling in the cathedral at the late evening service and rigorously examining herself as to the shortcomings of the dying year. She confessed many things in a vague, untroubled way; but had any one told her that she had cruelly wronged her neighbour, and helped to bring an innocent man to shame, and prison, and death, she would not have believed the accusation.
"I know Milton-Cleave well," said the author. "A capital fellow, quite the typical country gentleman." "Is he not?" said Mrs. Selldon, much relieved to have found this subject in common. "His wife is a great friend of mine; she is full of life and energy, and does an immense amount of good. Did you say you had stayed with them?"
Selldon had told him, adding a further development which occurred to him, and wondering to himself whether "Like a Green Bay Tree" would be a selling title. After this he went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just, or the unbroken sleep which goes by that name. But whispering tongues can poison truth. London in early September is a somewhat trying place.
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