Country life -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
When the Pawle children went away after their secluded summer, Harry and
Sidney kissed gravely, under command of the head-nurse, who called them
"little sweet’earts." But the kiss meant nothing to Harry, since he had
been told to proffer it. He would rather have kissed Lady Ursula, a
large-eyed pink and flaxen damsel of twelve, for whom he had an
admiration, though she never had much to say to him, and there was no
interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney’s. He missed Sidney
when they went away, but not for long, and by this time he had almost
forgotten her. For Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that
summer, and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial plans for
her grandson she seemed to have forgotten them, for she scarcely ever
mentioned the names of her one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney
Pawle, except once when the news of Lady Ursula’s marriage was in all
the papers. Then she said that Ursula was a beautiful girl, but Sidney
had always been her favourite. Harry looked at the picture of bride and
bridesmaids. He remembered how he had admired Ursula’s beauty, and she
was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized her; grown-up, she seemed a
generation older. Sidney was recognizable in the photograph; she was
not yet grown up. But she looked different too, in her silken finery.
Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her children’s clothes during
that summer at Poldaven, for the girls had never been dressed in
anything more elaborate than linen and rough straw. Somehow this
bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate. He could not
imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing knight, as she had done
once or twice when they had got quite away by themselves; or indeed his
letting her into any of that kind of secret, now. He put the paper away
and forgot her afresh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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