The Argosy — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

168 A Secret of the Sea. of fluffy, white beaver, and as they were very rarely brushed, they gave him a certain shaggy and unkempt appearance. He had a trick of whistling under his breath whem he had nothing better to do, and of jingling the keys and loose change in his pocket. It was a peculianty of Sir Thomas that his shoes always creaked when he walked. No one could tell why every pair of shoes that he had should do so, but they did. At Stammars, everybody was so accustomed to this creaking that if by any possibility he had become possessed of a noiseless pair, his - family would certainly have been alarmed: they would have taken it as an omen that something dreadful was about to happen. It was told in Pembridge as a good thing that when Sir Thomas was presented to his Sovereign, his shoes creaked so loudly that the eyes of all the great functionaries were turned on him in horror; but the little man backed smilingly out of the royal presence, blandly unconscious of the con- sternation he had excited. When we first make his acquaintance he had just been elected member for Pembridge, in place of the late Mr. Rackstraw, who had represented that borough for more than twenty years. Parliament would meet in February, when the family would go up to town, and Sir ‘Thomas would take his oaths and his seat, and do his best to justify the hopes of his Pembridgian supporters, that he would speedily become one of the shining lights of his country’s senate Lady Dudgeon was a tall, large-boned woman, some half-dozen years younger than her husband. She had a loud, rough-edged voice, and a magisterial cross-examining manner. She was never happier than when laying down the law to some of her servants or dependents, or scolding them for an infringement of one or another of the innumer- able rules and regulations with which she strove to fence round the daily lives of all those over whom she had any control. Had she been aman, Lady Dudgeon would infallibly have developed into a Justice of the Peace, and as such have been a terror to all the evil-doers of the neighbourhood. With two exceptions, everybody at Stammars, her husband included, stood in awe of her. Those exceptions were her eldest daughter, Sophia, aged thirteen ; and Eleanor Lloyd. Lady Dudgeon had only two children living—the aforesaid Sophia, and Caroline, who was two years younger than her sister. For their behoof it was that an engagement had been entered into with Olive Deane. They were two handsome, resolute girls, full of high spirits and mischief, who looked upon governesses as their natural enemies. Three ladies of this profession they had already worried into resigning their position at Stammars, and they had looked forward with con- siderable glee to worrying Miss Deane in like manner. It was on a complaint, from Madame Ribaud, who was governess number two, respecting some terrible act of mutiny, that Sophia obtained a signal victory over her mother, and from that time she had CORNICE OOS (GO)