Who Was Lost and Is Found: A NovelOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Who Was Lost and Is Found: A Novel
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Criminals -- Fiction; Mothers and sons -- Fiction; Scotland -- Fiction
into safety, and safety of a kind in which he should be less hampered
than here. There was the old woman, for instance, who had been kind to
him, whom he did not want to shock above measure or to get into trouble.
He resolved he would not take refuge in any place where there was an old
woman again, unless she were an old woman of a very different kind. Mrs
Ogilvy was quite right in her conviction that there was good in him. He
did not want to hurt her, even to hurt her feelings. In short, he would
not have anything done to vex her, unless there was no other way.
But though I cannot throw much light on his thoughts, I can tell you how
he spent the afternoon, to outward sight and consciousness. Robert
Ogilvy, before the arrival of this companion, had discovered that he
could arrange himself a rude sort of a lounging-place by means of an old
chair with a broken seat, and some of the rough wooden boxes, once
filled with groceries, &c., which had been placed in the tool-house to
be out of the way, and in which Andrew sometimes placed his seedlings,
and sometimes his strips of cloth and nails and sticks for tying up his
flowers. Lew had naturally edged his friend out of this comfortable
place. The seat of the chair was of cane-work, and still afforded
support to the sitter, though it was not in good repair; and the boxes
were of various heights, so that a variety of levels could be procured
when he tired of one. His meditations were promoted by smoke, and also
by a great deal of whisky-and-water, for which he took the trouble to
disarrange himself periodically to obtain a fresh supply from the bottle
which it disturbed Mrs Ogilvy to see so continually on the table in the
dining-room. It would have been more convenient to have it here--and it
was seldom that Lew subjected himself to an inconvenience; but he did in
this case, I am unable to tell why. It must be added that this constant
refreshing had no more effect upon him than as much water would have had
on many other people. And those little pilgrimages into the dining-room
were the only sound he made in the quiet of the house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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