Guy Earlscourt's Wife — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

seen in Speci: and yards of plashing foun- military brass it’s the word - d, and foaming $s ringing, and erry, and your rith the Honor- ‘ite son of Lord 1a 2? Q. And [in feast. about it.” n the middle of aist, sunburned vice. The pret- irl of sixteen. und she stood in lor, that flashed .~ k from her jov- lovely baby, and nd has the fair - gvirl? Well, at Crop the flow- er a sunburned | se, put her in 2a ess but a goo 3? Polly labors after her nice, - but in spite of nose, perfect 1 rifle larger than iouth, with that uth at once re° y white muslin ad os, ‘Y Gat! Aas cay * at. Se eS ar ae £ “s : After Fourteen Years. 65 Jute and sweet. She may be tanned; you may sec a few freckles under her eyes, but oh, those eyes !—-so blue, so radi- ant, flashing with life, and health, and fun, and mischief, from morning till night! You neither saw freckles nor tan, once their lustre flashed upon you. The auburn hair 1s short- eropped, and all curling round her head; and standing there in the- June sunlight, she looks lke a saucy boy, an auda- ciously saucy boy, ready for anything in the way of fun or frolic, from smoking a cigar to riding an unbroken colt round the paddock without saddie or bridie Rosanna sits before her—Rosanna, whom old Time no more dare approach than any other man. fourteen years have left her absolutely and entirely unehanged—erim of aspect, kindly of heart, sharp of tongue, and a model of al! the Christian and domestie virtues, with only one weaknes”, and that—Polly! Polly, who has been her torment, her plague, her idol, any time those fourteen years; whom shc worries about all day, and whose innumerable sins and ill- doings keep her awake all night; whom she scolds, and loves, and spoils, and to whose will she bows in as abject submis- sion as her weak-minded brother himself. Polly’s earhest recollection is of this pleasant eight- roomed house, in the suburbs of Speckhaven, with its little flower garden in front, its kitchen garder and paddock in the rear, its svotless whiteness of wall, and brilliant green of shutters. Of London. and “Dozy,” and her baby life, all memory is gone. She believed the story of herself current in the town--a very, simple story—that she is the orphan child of dear old Duke’s cousin, dead and gone, and left as the sole legacy of the dying man. “And a precious legacy I have been!” Polly was. wont te observe in parenthesis. “Duke don’t mind my enormities; indeed, if I murdered somebody, I don’t think it wouijd sur- prise or trouble him any, but that poor Rosanna! Uve been bringing her gray hairs (she won’t dve), with sozrow to Speckhaven Cemetery, every hour since she got me first.” So Polly had shot up, tall, slim, pretty, healthy, and self- willed. She had persisted in eatehing every disorder inci- dental to ehildnood. ~She had made Rosanna sit up with her for weeks and wecks together, and she had torm more new dresses, and tumbled off more dizzy heights, than any other child on record. She liked her ow: vay, ana ‘nsisted on having it, with an energy worthy a better cause, and beve she stood at sixteen, the prettiest and wildest madeap in Lineoln- shire—-a handsome, blue-eyed brunette. With Robert Hawksley’s fige hundred pounds, Duke hed purchased this pretty oottage, just outside the large, bo ° comicbooks.com