The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery, Volume 1 (of 3)Wills, C. J. (Charles James)
General
The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery, Volume 1 (of 3)
Wills, C. J. (Charles James)
England -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction
The place seemed changed. Lord Pit Town appreciated with mingled
pleasure and astonishment the brightening influence of the ladies'
presence; the party, if not gay, was at least cheerful; the little
leaven had leavened the whole lump. They broke up early, satisfied with
themselves and with each other. But Hetton's equanimity was again
disturbed in the morning when his lordship actually proposed to drive
Mrs. Haggard and her cousin in the park. He retired in disgust to his
own quarters, where he consoled himself by the inspection of his betting
book and the reading of his trainer's last report. Haggard, of the Home
Office, in his own room, with two packs of cards, worked out historical
games of whist and studied the _coups_ of Lachapelle and the other
great masters. Dr. Wolff walked aimlessly up and down the new
galleries, and stopping before Bab Chudleigh's portrait, soliloquized,
as is the manner of his race, "Ah, lovely English woman, you are but a
bainted bortrait, but all men admired you because they could not help
it; if all they say be true, Madame Jezebel, you were as bad a woman as
lived in your bad old days. Gott in Himmel! but you are very like the
leetel Warrender lady. God forbid the leetel lady shall have a heart
like yours. No, I wrong that innocent English _mädchen_. But you are
both _wunderschön_. Hein!" And then the doctor continued his
perambulations, and in his dreamy way, he pondered on Lucy's seraphic
smile, and on her wealth of golden hair. "Such things are not for me,"
he thought. "I must go on loving the baintings and the bortraits to the
end of the chapter," and then he sat down to write a business letter
about Fra Filippo Lippi to old Mr. Creeps. Justice Haggard and his son
wandered about the home farm; the father criticized the piggeries,
while the son smoked a big cigar and thought of nothing at all.
"Gad! Reginald," said the old man, "there's one thing I can't
understand. Pit Town, who looks after most things, neglects these poor
beasts in a most shameful way; if ever I came into the title I should
make it my first business to pull down the whole range of buildings,"
here he indicated the piggeries in an indignant manner; "they are a
disgrace to the place, sir; the sight of them offends me."
"Well, father, I hope you may, I sincerely hope you may carry out your
own ideas here some day," said the dutiful son; "but I don't think the
old man cares very much for your hobby, you know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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