The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]Le Gallienne, Richard
General
The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]
Le Gallienne, Richard
Clergy -- England -- Fiction; English fiction -- 19th century; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each
other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom!
It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you
look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully
you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women
potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a
lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair
English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars?
Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her
manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and
Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She
liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel
Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring
her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that
she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she
chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of
her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without
embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and
watched her.
"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a
conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece.
"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge.
"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't
expected him to be so young."
"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge,
started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some
day, will Mr. Londonderry."
Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine
interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him.
Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of
its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present
prosperity.
"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here,
wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry
came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something
going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr.
Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.
Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he
would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At
the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this
young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of
surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of
the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic
wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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