Some Persons UnknownHornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
General
Some Persons Unknown
Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
English fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, English
Mr. Harwood did not remember telling him any one thing. He was kneeling
with his back to the window. Kenyon's sentences had come with long
intervals between them, and accompanied by the most loving glances
his father had ever received from him. The father's heart throbbed
violently. Perhaps he realised that his boy was dying; he was more
acutely conscious that Kenyon and he were alone together, and that
childish love and trust had come at last into the dear, dying eyes. He
had striven so hard to win this look--had longed for it of late with so
mighty a longing! And at the last it was his. What else was there to
grasp?
Kenyon began to murmur indistinctly--about cricket--about getting out.
Mr. Harwood leant closer to catch the words, and to drink deeper while
he could of the dim loving eyes. But there came suddenly a change of
expression. Kenyon was silent. And Mr. Harwood never knew why.
In the garden they heard the cry, and sped into the house, and up the
stairs and into the room, warm from their game. They opened the door
and stood still; for they saw Kenyon as none ever had seen him before,
with his face upon his father's shoulder, and a smile there such as
Forrester himself had never won.
A LITERARY COINCIDENCE
It was twenty-five minutes past eight, and a fine October morning, when
Mr. Wolff Mason, the popular novelist and editor of _Mayfair_, emerged
from the dressing-room of his house in Kensington and came downstairs
dabbing his chin with his clean pocket-handkerchief. The day had begun
badly with the man of letters, whose boast it was that he had shaved
for upwards of forty years without cutting himself anything like forty
times. He entered the dining-room with a comically rueful expression on
his kindly humorous face, and with a twitching behind the spectacles
which would have led those who knew him best to prick their ears for
one of the delightful things which the novelist was continually saying
at his own expense. His face fell, however, when he found no one in the
room but the maid who was lighting the wick beneath the plated kettle
on the breakfast table.
"Has Miss Ida not come down yet?"
"Not that I know of, sir. Shall I go and see?"
"Oh, never mind, never mind," said the novelist, cursorily examining
the letters on his plate, and opening none of them. "Well, upon my
word, I don't know what has come over Ida," he added to himself, as
he undid the fastenings of the French window which led down iron steps
into the little London garden behind the house. "Yesterday morning
she ran it pretty fine. The day before she was a good minute late. Of
course she may be in time yet, but I do wish I could teach her to be
five minutes early for everything, as I am. Ida is worse than either
of her sisters in this respect; and she began by being the best of the
three."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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