Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
By degrees however the good doctor had become so absorbed in the sounds
that rushed, now wailing, now jubilant, now tender as a twilight wind,
now imperious as the voice of the war-tempest, from the fingers of the
raptured boy, that the reading of the first vesper-psalm had commenced
while he was yet watching the slow rising index, in the expectation that
the organist was about to resume. The voice of his Irish
brother-chaplain, Sir Toby Mathews, roused him from his reverie of
delight, and as one ashamed he stole away through the door that led from
the little organ loft into the minstrel's gallery in the great hall, and
so escaped the catholic service, but not the marquis's roasting. Whether
the music had any share in the fact that the good man died a good
catholic at last, I leave to the speculation of who list.
Lady Margaret continued unchangingly kind to Dorothy; and the tireless
efforts of the girl to amuse and please poor little Molly, whom the
growing warmth of the season seemed to have no power to revive, awoke
the deep gratitude of a mother. This, as well as her husband's absences,
may have had something to do with the interest she began to take in the
engine of which Dorothy had assumed the charge, for which she had always
hitherto expressed a special dislike, professing to regard it as her
rival in the affections of her husband, but after which she would now
inquire as Dorothy's baby, and even listen with patience to her
expositions of its wonderful construction and capabilities. Ere long
Dorothy had a tale to tell her in connection with the engine, which,
although simple and uneventful enough, she yet found considerably more
interesting, as involving a good deal of at least mental adventure on
the part of her young cousin.
One evening, after playing with little Molly for an hour, then putting
her to bed and standing by her crib until she fell asleep, Dorothy ran
to see to her other baby; for the cistern had fallen rather lower than
she thought well, and she was going to fill it. She found Caspar had
lighted the furnace as she had requested; she set the engine going, and
it soon warmed to its work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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