The Argosy — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

107 THE STORY OF ‘DOROTHY GRAPE, WE found her out through Mr. Brandon’s nephew: a medical student, who gave his people trouble, and one day got his arm and head broken. Mr. Brandon and the Squire were staying in London at the Tavistock Hotel. I, Johnny Ludlow, was at Miss Deveen’s on a visit you have heard of before ; but there’s no time to recur to that. News of the accident was brought to Mr. Brandon : the young man had been carried into No. 60, Gibraitar Terrace, Islington district, and a doctor named Pitt was attending him. We went to see him at once. A narrow, quiet street, as I recol- lected well, this Gibraltar Terrace, the dwellings it contained facing each other, thirty in a row. No. 60 proved to be the same house to which we had gone before, when enquiring about the illness of Francis Radcliffe, and Pitt was the same doctor. It was the same landlady also; I knew her as soon as she opened the door ; a slender, faded woman, past middle life, with a pink flush on her thin cheeks, and something of the lady about her. “What an odd thing, Johnny!” whispered the Squire. ‘‘ Mapping, I remember her name was.” Mr. Brandon went upstairs to his nephew. We were shown by her into the small parlour, which looked as faded as it had looked on our last visit, years before : as faded as she was. While telling us how the accident occurred, she had to run away at a call from upstairs. “Looks uncommonly care-worn, doesn’t she, Johnny!” remarked the Squire. ‘‘ Seems a nice sort of person, though.” “Yes, sir. J like her. Does it strike you that her voice has a home-ring in it? I think she must be from Worcestershire.” ‘A home-ring—Worcestershire !” retorted he. ‘It wouldn’t be you, Johnny, if you did not get up some fancy or other.—Here she comes !—You are not from Worcester, are you, ma’am?” cried the Squire, going to the root of the question at once, in his haste to con- vict my fancy of its sins. ‘Yes, I am, sir,” she replied; and I saw the pink flush on her cheeks deepen to a crimson hectic. ‘I knew you, sir, when I was a young girl, many years ago. ‘Though I should not have recognised you when you were last here, but that you left your card. We lived at Islip, sir; at that pretty cottage with the yellow roses round the porch. You must remember Dolly Grape.” “ But you are not Dolly Grape!” returned the Squire, pushing up his spectacles. “Yes, sir, I was Dolly Grape. Your mother knew us well, sir so did you.” conniclooolkks (CO) *