The Argosy — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

16 The Village Blacksmtth. whom the good nuns had always thought would have become one of their body, became the wife of an English clergyman. Véronique was two years younger than Natalie, and she had cer- tainly never shown any signs of a vocation for the religious life A coquette from the cradle, wilful, passionate, beautiful, the plague and yet the pet of the convent, it would have been a miracle of grace indeed, said the nuns, if Véronique ever wore a habit. And yet the day came when Véronique did wear a habit—for a day—and the miracle, if there was one, was how she obtained it; but that was never known. In it she escaped from the convent, and eloped with a young English officer whom she met at her uncle's house. ‘They were married in England and sailed for India the fol- lowing week. It was not a happy marriage, and five years afterwards Véronique died of fever, and, if her sad letters to her sister were to be believed, of a broken heart. On her death, her trinkets and other possessions, among them the habit, were sent to Mrs. ‘l‘empest, who had never parted with them. Perhaps, had she known the part that unlucky habit was to play in her daughter’s life, she would have burnt it. This was the story Mrs. Tempest now told Vera. CHAPTER III. MRS. CANTER AT HOME. It was washing-day, and no one who knew Mrs. Canter would have ventured to call it anything else in her presence. No doubt the generality of people preferred to call it Monday, but then in Mrs. Canter’s opinion the generality of people were fools. On washing- day Mrs. Canter, always big, was bigger than ever. Perhaps the importance of the work on which she was engaged from four in the morning till nine at night added to her stature. But so did the pattens on which on these occasions she was mounted; and so did the large poke bonnet perched crown-uppermost on the top of her head. Her somewhat voluminous skirt was pinned up under a huge apron, and her sleeves with great difficulty rolled up over her enor- mous arms to her shoulders, a feat never performed but once in the twenty-four hours. Thus vested Mrs. Canter took up her position at the wash-tub three or four hours before less industrious people had left their beds, and with brief intervals for food and for the correction of any unruly member of her family, there she remained revelling in soap-suds, redolent of soda, enveloped in a cloud of steam from the boiler, through which she loomed huge and myste- rious, her arms steeped in water, her fingers crimped and crinkled, till the kitchen-clock struck nine. The scene of Mrs. Canter’s labours was the wash-house, into which sacred temple, the holy of holies of the Canter household, no ['ttle COMIC OOOKS.CO