The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 226: what you’re looking at

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

THE FVIL GENIUS. 215 needle, looking at Kitty from time to time through the open door. The air was delightfully cool, the pleasant rippling of the brook fell soothingly on the ear, the seat in the summer-house received a sitter with the softly-yielding submission of elastic wires. Susan had just finished her early dinner: in mind and body alike this good girl was entirely and deservedly at her ease. By finely succeeding degrees her eyelids began to show a tendency downward; her truant needlework escaped from her fingers, and lay lazily on her lap. She snatched it up witha start, and sewed with severe resoJution until her thread was ex- hausted. The reel was ready at her side; she took it up for a fresh supply, and innocently rested her head against the leafy and flowery wall of the arbor. Was it thought that gradually closed her eyes again? or was itsleep? In either case, Susan was lost to all sense of passing events; and Susan’s breathing be- vriogrs eee regular, emulous of the musical regularity of the brook. As a lesson in patience, the art of angling pursued in a shal- low brook has its moral uses. Kitty fished, and waited, and re- newed the bait, and tried again with a command of temper which would have been a noveity in Susan’s experience, if Susan had been awake. But the end which comes tw all things came also to Kitty’s patience. Leaving her rod on the bank, she let the line and hook take care of themselves, and wandered away in search of some new amusement. Lingering here and there to gather flowers from the beds as she passed them, Kitty was stopped by a shrubbery, with a rustic seat placed near it, which marked the limits of the garden on that side. The path that she had been following led her further and further away from the brook, but still left it well in view. She could see, on her right hand, the clumsy old wooden bridge which crossed the stream, and served as a means of com- munication for the servants and the tradespeople, between the cottage and the village on the lower ground a mile away. The child felt hotand tired. She rested herself on the bench, and, spreading the flowers by her side, began to arrange them in the form of a nosegay. Still true to her love for Sydney, she had planned to present the nosegay to her mother, offering the gift as an excuse for returning to the forbidden subject of her governess, and for asking when they might hope to see each other again. Choosing flowers and then rejecting them, trying other colors and wondering whether she had accomplished a change for the better, Kitty was startled by the sound of a voice calling to her from the direction of the brook. She looked round, and saw a gentleman crossing the bridge. He asked the way to Brightwater Cottage. There was something in his voice that attracted her—how or why, at her age, she never thought of inquiring. Eager and excited, she ran across the lawn which Jay between her and the brook, before she answered the question. The gentleman approached her, and suddenly stood still. a COMMICLO© S (CO) im