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20bet.tvl 78. Another Man’s Wife She belonged to a race whose extinction Francis Grose lamented. She was what was termed an antiquated gentlewoman whose dress was a survival of the fashion of two if not three earlier generations: consisting of a stiff-starched cap and hood, a little hoop and a rich silk damask gown with large flowers. She acted as housekeeper to her brother, and the keys of the cupboards jingled at her side. She was choice in her stores, which included cordial waters, cherry and raspberry brandy, Daffy's Elixir, pots of currant jelly and raspberry jam, and her stock also comprised salves, electuaries, and purges for the poor. When she walked she leaned, perhaps a little affectedly, on an ivory-handled crutch stick, and a fat pug dog rolled in her wake. This pug now snored alongside of her, and the[Pg 66] little terrier slept with its paws upon the pug's stomach.,The service began and was proceeding with its accustomed smoothness and decorum when a most unseemly interruption occurred. Maria Mifsud had long entertained suspicions that all was not well with the interior of the organ. Lately a few of the notes had refused to make a sound, and to-day there seemed to be more of these delinquents than ever. While Mr. Bliggins was collecting the offering Maria began to play a voluntary carefully practised beforehand. She had fairly launched into “One Sweetly Solemn Thought” when suddenly she discerned peering curiously at her through one of the round holes which adorn the front of the instrument the small bright eye of a mouse. The intruder was apparently quite calm and self-possessed. Not so Maria. With a piercing shriek she jumped from the organ stool and rushing to the back of the church leaped wildly to the seat beside her scandalized and uncomprehending mother. Almost at the same moment the offending mouse scampered down the internal anatomy of the organ and gained freedom through an exit beside the pedals. Mr. Wells turned crimson and stood on one foot. Most of the ladies of the congregation drew their feet up on the seat beside them. The mouse ran furiously along the sacred aisles of the church.,Mrs. Shelly nodded, smiled her twinkly smile and rose with alacrity.,Confusion followed. Harry was struck with a great fear. Was she dead? He had never seen a girl do so before. Would they hang him?,Patricia gazed approvingly at the dim, shadowy study of graceful figures grouped in attentive attitudes about a reader in a landscape of suggested loveliness that spoke to any observer with delicate symbolism.，"Yes, I was indeed. Down in a small place cabled Castle-Connell, near Limerick. Nice people in Limerick, but a trifle flighty, don't you think? Fond of the merry blunderbuss, and all that, and with a decided tendency towards midnight maraudings."，"I'm afraid I don't fit very well yet," Scroggie answered. "Maybe you'll let me trail along with you sometimes, Bill, and learn things?"，"Pa," said the boy, in guarded tones, "you best watch that man Hinter, an' watch him close."“Get out of that, you old grandmother!”

The building held all the unmistakable odors of a school room. The smell of chalk dust, mouldy bread crusts, mice, dirty slates and musty books rose up to smite the arrivals. Four rows of pine seats, blackened with ink-daubs and deeply scarred by pocket-knives, ran the entire length of the building. A big box stove stood in the centre of the room, its wavering pipe supported by wires from the ceiling.,Maurice squirmed. "It seemed a lot longer than two weeks," he said faintly.,"No, I didn't. Joe had left for Bridgetown to bring in a couple of duck-hunters to old man Swanson's. Clevelanders, they are, so I didn't see him.","Did ye iver hear av Harry O'Dule goin' back on a promise?" said the old man, reproachfully. "Help you wull I shurely, an' I'll be tellin' ye how. Go ye over t' the corner, Billy, an' pull up the loose board av the flure. Ye'll be findin' a box there. Yis, that's right. Now fetch ut here. Look ye both, byes.",With some impatience prisoner's counsel admitted that the devil-stick had been used to kill the deceased, and requested the prosecutor to pass on to more important details.,My, oh, my! Just look at all the apples! There must be fully a half bushel—a good many for such a little old tree.,"I don't care about the county. It must think what it likes; and when it knows her it will sympathize with me. Oh! what a name! Scully! Was there ever so dreadful a name?",“What’s the row, Bob?” he wanted to know.,"If I were to resign all hope of gaining the Towers, if I were to consent to leave your people still in possession," he says, passionately, but in a low tone, "should I earn one tender thought in your heart? Speak, Mona! speak!","You?" says Mona, with extreme hauteur and an unpleasant amount of well-feigned astonishment. She does not deign to go to meet him, or even turn her head altogether in his direction, but just throws a swift and studiously unfriendly glance at him from under her long lashes.,But this, it may be, was all village slander, and was never borne out by anything. And Elspeth had married the gardener's son, and Sir Launcelot had married an earl's daughter; and when the first baby was born at the "big house," Elspeth came to the Towers and nursed him as she would have nursed her own little bairn, but that Death, "dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just, shining nowhere but in the dark," sought and claimed her own little one two days after its birth.,"We've allowed for that, sir," said the Admiral. "'Tis a contingency which has had a very full share of contemplation. If we miss her and pass her in the way you[Pg 349] suggest, there is still Rio to receive us, where we will await the Minorca's arrival. And in that you will get your way, and crown this struggle with success. So that let us miss her by failing to sight her as you say, it can but mean that we shall be first and ready for Mr Lawrence.".