Dr. Lavendar's People

Dr. Lavendar's People

The children used to come up a flagstone path to the side door, and then step down two steps into an entry. Two rooms opened on this entry; in one the children sat at small, battered desks and studied; in the other Miss Baily heard their lessons, sitting at a table covered with a red cloth, which had a white Grecian fret for a border and smelled of crumbs. On the wall behind her was a faded print of "Belshazzar's Feast"; in those days this was probably the only feasting the room ever sawalthough on a thin-legged sideboard there were two decanters (empty) and a silver-wire cake-basket which held always three apples. Both rooms looked out on the gardenthe garden and, in fine weather, Mr. David Baily! ... Ah, mewhat it was, in the dreary stretches of mental arithmetic, to look across the flower-beds and see Mr. Davidtall and dark and melancholypacing up and down, sometimes with a rake, oftener with empty hands; always with vague, beautiful eyes fixed on some inner vision of heart-broken memory. Miss Ellen's pupils were confident of this vision because of a tombstone in the burial-ground which recorded the death of Maria Hastings, at the romantic age of seventeen; and, as everybody in Old Chester knew, Mr. Baily had been in love with this same seventeen-year-old Maria. To be sure, it was thirty years ago; but that does not make any difference, "in real love," as any school-girl can tell you. So, when David Baily paced up and down the garden paths or sat in the sunshine under the big larch we all knew that he was thinking of his bereavement. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 34427
Author: Deland, Margaret Wade Campbell
Release Date: Oct 11, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Hitchcock, Lucius Wolcott, 1868-1942