The Argosy — page 292: what you’re looking at

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

The Hammonds’ Ugly Duckling. 273 “Tf I may be allowed to express a professional opinion, Hammond, I should say you would do well to let your daughter go.” “My dear Jeffreys! Homerus dormitat/ Munich 1s notoriously one of the most unhealthy towns in Europe. Besides, what is the matter with Joan?” ‘There is never anything the matter with any of us, I am happy to think,” remarked Gertrude. “Our little Joan is nervous and impressionable, and is just at a stage of mental and physical development when a thorough change would be most beneficial to her. You must remember that she differs from her brothers and sisters in not having inherited your constitution, Hammond,” said Dr. Jeffreys significantly. Nobody found any immediate reply to this, for Joan’s birth had cost her mother her life. Moreover, she was rather like her mother in temperament, and Mr. Hammond had been devoted to his wife. Not a soul but felt, consequently, that Dr. Jeffreys had played a trump card, while Joan, with unconscious tact, followed up the advantage. Going to her father, she knelt beside his chair. ‘‘ Let me go !” she murmured imploringly and caressingly. Mr. Hammond’s reluctant glance rested on her eager countenance, then on the trembling little hand laid upon his arm. In her whole attitude there was an intense expression which he had never noticed before. “YT will think about it,” he said coldly; and Joan rose with a feeling oddly compounded of prescient triumph and girlish remorse. Mr. Hammond did, of course, in the following days make a few efforts to withdraw his half-given consent. But urged by Dr. Jeffreys, supplicated by Joan, and hurried on by Charles Payne (who was always tremendously energetic when other people hesitated), he finally yielded. Gertrude, with a portentous. countenance of bottled-up contempt, packed Joan’s things, and marked her disapproval of her conduct by allowing her to do nothing for herself Edith repeated at intervals, ‘‘ Well, Joan, you ave fortunate!” Cousin Ned promised a speedy visit of his own to Munich; and Miss Priscilla wrote a most furious epistle.. So outraged and inexplicable was its tone, that the Hammonds were at first rendered speechless by amazement; the more so that Miss Priscilla had never before interfered in their _ affairs. ‘The project,” she declared, ‘‘ was insensate, ridiculous. If put into execution it would be a death-blow to her belief in the Hammonds’ propriety, RIGHT FEELING, and COMMON SENSE!!!” This was only the beginning of the letter, but the rest of it was all in the same strain. ‘Just write to Priscilla and tell her that when we want advice we ask for it, Gerty,” said Mr. Hammond. But Gerty, on the contrary, wrote a very emulcient reply; for she wisely thought that it does not do to quarrel with rich old cousins for the sake of perverse young sisters. A week later our little heroine started for Munich. VOL, XXXI. T cConnicloooks (C(O) rn