The Argosy — page 203: what you’re looking at

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

188 The White Witch. tease me, papa and Matilda and Annette, and wonder that you can’t write a long, amusing letter, and ask me how you spell, and—and make me cry.” “Well, in the last letter I told you I had neuralgia; and you never even asked me in your answer whether it was better.” “Oh, yes!” retorted Elspeth, with a new grievance, ‘you should have seen them when they worried me to know what you said, and I told them that. Papa said: ‘Tell him to try Bunter’s Nervine!’ ‘Say a flannel bandage is a very good thing,’ said Matilda. And the children cut out a lot of advertisements from the back of—back of Punch, and pushed them under my door, and ran—ran away.” And at this description of the inhuman persecution she had suffered on his account, Elspeth fairly sobbed. So that he had to be the consoler after all. Calm was shortly restored, but he had put off his first lesson in the duties of woman as a sympathiser till another time: and as he returned to the Abbey for dinner he asked himself whether a sense of these duties should not be instinctive. ** Godfrey,” said Mr. Mayne at dinner, “ I spoke to Wilding about Dick—that you think he ought to be sent away, unless he can be kept from annoying his neighbours. ‘The farmer was sorry, and quite civil over it, and seemed very much put out: but he says there is no place that he could send him to, and that he would never be happy anywhere else. He says, and there’s something in it, I think, that to a lad in poor Dick’s state of mind the lanes and trees and fields he has always known are better friends to him than human beings, that he talks to them and makes companions of them and would pine if he were sent away from them. He is sure Dick never meant any harm, and if you are afraid of him ——” “Tam not afraid of him,” interrupted Godfrey, in a rather fiery tone, vexed at the subject’s having been started before them all. “In Dick’s unwarrantable dislike to me he has taken to play the part of a spy. He jumps over the wall and rambles in the garden, and peeps at me from behind hedges, and dodges my steps; as though I were a criminal, and he a very bad detective. I really think it is time his pranks should be put a stop to. ‘There are proper places for imbe- ciles where they are well taken care of: why does not Wilding shut him up in one ?” Godfrey was interrupted by a low cry of indignation from Miss Dixon. Against his will, he glanced at her and saw that she was regarding him with flashing eyes and an expression of scornful con- demnation. Angry before, it turned Godfrey nearly frantic. Who was this girl, that she should dare to take the liberty of reproving him? If—if certain doubts were correct, she might not be worthy to sit at his father’s table. Fearing he should speak some rash word in his temper, Godfrey, partly forgetting himself, rose and quitted the table. His father, amazed at this breach of good manners, called after him; but to no purpose. Eomichbooks.co i