The Argosy — page 206: what you’re looking at

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

189 A COUNTRY HEART. By G. B. STUART. I. P OOD-MORNING, Miss Verey; I thought I would just look round and see if you were inclined to come out.” “Come out! Isn’t it pouring with rain P” “Why, yes, to be sure, so itis! Well, may I come in, then?” ‘ Come in, by all means, but shake yourself well first in the hall. Now,” as Harry Tredennick disappeared from the window and entered | by the front door, which at Myrtle Bank stands wide open all the lodging-letting season : ‘‘ take the paper, or put my work-box in order, or look at Cornfill till I have finished my letter, and then we can make some plans.” The young man sat down with the paper held suggestively in front of him, but his eyes looked unblinkingly over the top of it at Miss Verey. He was not much of a reader, at the best of times, and would not think of so employing himself except under severe pressure. Kate Verey went on writing: ‘‘The one young man of this benighted place has just dropped in to call, for the fourth time since Sunday.”—This was such a telling way of winding up her letter; so much more effective than ‘The post is just going,” or “ Mamma is calling me to make tea.”—“ He is a kind of giant, who lives in these solitudes,” she went on, to her friend, Mrs. Chamberlain; “fairly good- looking and well-mannered, only rather a bore about incessant sight- seeing, I believe he has a baronetcy somewhere in the back- ground. Now, don’t go and repeat all this to Captain Anstey the next time you are hard up for conversation, or he will be sure to say something nasty and sarcastic about my summer at the seaside! By- the-bye, is he going to do any yachting this year?” Mrs. Chamberlain was Kate Verey’s dearest friend ; Captain Anstey was her cousin and her guest; and Kate herself was the prettiest and most whimsical girl in their set, who, instead of going visiting among her friends after the London season was over, as all properly disposed girls would have done, insisted on carrying her mother off to a remote South Coast fishing-village for the two months of autumn which should, canonically, be spent in Scotland. Whether she repented her freak, and whether she really wished the end of her letter to be pre- served from Captain Anstey’s knowledge, I leave the reader to de- termine. | “There! that’s done,” said Kate, looking up and catching her visitor’s round grey eyes fixed upon her, which disconcerted the “kind of giant ” much more than the London-bred young lady. “ Anything in the paper this morning ? ’ alee GONNIGDOOKS (SC Q) am