The Real Lady Hilda: A Sketch

The Real Lady Hilda: A Sketch

Too early for the lamp, I suppose, and yet too dark to read a line. And my stepmother closed her novel, with an impatient snap, as she added, This is the worst of these horrid, poky lodgings; one never can have anything at the time one wants it. What a dismal little den it is, Gwen! What possessed us to come here? I could have answered the question promptly and briefly in a single word [8]Poverty; but, as it was a term my relative specially detested, I merely shrugged my shoulders, and continued to gaze into the miserable apology for a garden which ran between our quarters and the high street of Stonebrook, an insignificant market town in Sussex. Certainly there was not much to see, amid the creeping shadows of a November afternoon. A dripping hen, wading carefully across the road; a coal-cart, the driver enveloped in empty sacks; and the undertakers retrieverblack and curly, as an undertakers dog should besitting in his masters doorway, and yawning most infectiously. If we had lived opposite to the post-office, the lending library, or even the hotel, we should have enjoyed a livelier outlook, but Mound & SonFuneral EstablishmentCoffins, Hearses, and every Requisite, to quote from the in[9]scription over the door, in rigid white characters on a mourning ground, afforded but a gloomy and dispiriting prospect. It was too dark to descry more than the outline of an ornamental sign, on which was depicted an elegant open glass vehicle, drawn by four prancing black horses, with nodding plumes and streaming tailstriumphant-looking steeds, who seemed to say, Man treats most of us barbarously all our lives, then kills us, and makes money of our very skin and bones; it affords us sincere pleasure to carry him to the grave, and see the last of him. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 64892
Author: Croker, B. M. (Bithia Mary)
Release Date: Mar 21, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English