The Argosy — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

Edina. 17 asaking. ‘Who is your landlord?’ says he, ‘and does he know what a den this is?’ So JI told him that our landlord was Major Raynor at Eagles’ Nest, and that he did know, but that nothing was done for us. He have gone, I hear, into some o’ the other houses as well.” The woman’s tone was quite civil, but there could be no doubt that, in her independence, she was talking at Alice as the daughter of Major Raynor. “ As I passed him now he asked me whether my sick children was better—just as you have, Miss Raynor. I told him they was worse. ‘ And worse they will be, and never better, and all the rest of you too,’ says he, ‘ as long as you inhabit them pes-ti-fe-rus dens !’” Alice drew her head up in cold disdain, vouchsafing no further word, and feeling very angry at the implied reproach. The woman dropped a slight curtsey and went on her way. “ How insolent they all are!” exclaimed Alice to Mr. Stane. “That Sarah Croft would have been abusive in another moment.” “Their cottages are bad,” returned the young man, after a pause, “Could nothing be done, I wonder, to make them a little better?” “Tt is papa’s business, not mine,” remarked Alice in semi-resentment. “ And the idea of that strange man presuming to interfere! I wonder what he means by it ?”’. “He is looking about him by way of filling up his time; which must hang rather monotonously on his hands down here, I presume, away from his books and ledgers,” remarked Mr. Stane. ‘It is the way of the world, Alice; people must interfere in what does not concern them. Nay, just a few moments longer,” he said, for she had put her hat on, and was rising to depart. ‘To-morrow I shall have no such pleasant. and peaceful seat to linger in; I shall not have you. How delightful it all is!” And so, the disturbing interruption forgotten, Alice let fall her hat again, and they sat on in the balmy air, under the blue of the smiling sky, with the green foliage about them springing into life and beauty, type of another Life that must succeed our own winter, and the little songsters overhead worbling their joyous songs. Can none of us, grey now with care and work, and years, remember just such an hour spent in our own sweet spring-time?—when all around spoke to our hearts in one unmixed love-strain of melodious harmony, and the future looked like a charmed scroll that could but bring intense happi- ness in the unrolling ? “Take my arm, Alice,” he said in a half whisper, when they at length rose to return. She did take it, her face and her heart one hot glow. Took it timidly and with much self-consciousness, never having been in the habit of taking it, or he of offering it. Her hand trembled as it lay within his arm; each might have heard the other’s heart beat. And VOL. XXII. gs comicbooks.com