The Argosy — page 231: what you’re looking at

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

216 Winnifred Dee. looked up at the light in the upstair casement window, went back, and rang gently. ‘Then the light came down again and the door was opened to admit him. It was Charles Probert ; and Miss Jemima, as she recognised him, felt as if a quart of cold water were trickling down her spine. ‘That girl must be alone in the house, as Miss Jemima told herself. Martha White was away on her holiday, and the little maid-servant, Milly, was only there by day. Naturally but one in- ference could be drawn—that the Doctor was intending to devour her up, as the wolf devoured little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. ‘“‘And the skies don’t fall to crush that viper of a girl !” passionately shrieked Miss Jemima, as she clasped her hands together, and drew her curtains with a bang, to shut out all unholy sights. With the morning hours, the shameful scandal was abroad in Rill- brook, all the women whispering of it to one another. Not the men ; it was kept from them: though, indeed, there were but few men to whisper to, for the inhabitants consisted mostly of the other sex. Mrs. Curlew repeated it to her husband; who had his virtues, but was given to rum-and-water and fits of passion; and he went into such a rage with her that she was fain to retract the news. Captain Curlew, in his indignant anger at what he called women’s backbiting —especially at their backbiting that pretty, innocent, defenceless Winnie Dee—would have sallied forth to tell his friend Probert, but that the Doctor had gone off with early morning to attend a wedding at a distant farmhouse. And Winnie Dee, sitting singing at her work in the pleasant little shop, knew nothing of this. Her conscience was clear, her mind pure, her heart light, and she never dreamed that the breath of slander was abroad to touch her fair fame. Charles Probert, drinking the bride’s health at the wedding breakfast, knew nothing of it; neither then nor for many a day. By-and-by Winnifred Dee fell to wondering why people looked so strangely at her; why they shunned her. Her custom fell off; the ladies did not come any more to buy ribbons and laces and flowers at her shop, or to order bonnets; if she met them in the street they turned their heads another way. ‘The fashionable young girls, who used to come themselves to change their books, now sent a servant. She could not imagine how she had offended them ; what it was that she had done. The next thing was, that a new milliner was induced to come to the place, and she set herself up in the shop, then just vacated, underneath the rooms of Miss Jemima Raddle. Every woman in Rillbrook seemed to want new adornments, and crowded into it. Winnifred Dee watched them with a sinking heart. One bitterly cold wintry day, when the white snow lay on the ground and the skies were gray and gloomy, her young servant's mother presented herself at the house, to say that she could not let the girl attend any more. Winnifred asked why: was Milly dis- Eomichbooks Go