The Argosy — page 252: what you’re looking at

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

The Missing Rubtes. 235 through the season in the orthodox way. In the dining-room there is a widow and her young daughter ; in the drawing-room there are two sisters, one married and one single; they are just the kind of people who may be met anywhere.” Beatrice had finished her breakfast, and was feeling all the irrepres- sible buoyancy of health and youth. ‘The excitement and fatigue of yesterday had passed away ; even the sorrow of her loss seemed to be fading softly into the far past; and yet she knew that often in some quiet hour the old country home would rise before her eyes again. But the whole world seemed new to-day ; the sunshine was waiting for her out of doors; the shops were splendid with early summer fashions, and the streets gay with well-dressed people. She would not have been the natural, healthy girl that she was if she had not wanted instantly to go out and enjoy herself. “Dear Harriet,” she said, suddenly kissing her old governess: “ I hope you won’t think me very hard and unfeeling because I’m in good spirits this morning !” “Why should I think such things of you, child?” Mrs. Milton dearly loved her pupil, and she rather liked Beatrice to call her ‘* Harriet ;” it made her feel young. “Well, because some people would blame me, I suppose, for taking an interest in the life that is going on around me. They would say that I ought not to forget why I am wearing this,” touching her black gown. ‘‘ And indeed I don’t forget ; I never shall cease to remember /zm. But I am young, Harmiet, and I had rather a dreary time at Silverdean after you left us.” Her lips, full and soft, were quivering like the lips of a sorrowful child ; and there was in fact a good deal of the child left in Beatrice Ward. <A far harder woman than Mrs. Milton would have been moved at the sight of that wistful face. ‘“* My dear,” she said, taking Beatrice’s hand between her own, “ it is the greatest relief to me to find that your spirit is not crushed by grief and by the lonely life that you have led. It was not the right life for a girl to live; it might have made you a gloomy and morbid woman. You don’t know how often I have longed to take you away from that melancholy old cottage and bring you here into the heart of the world. It is a wicked world, my dear, as the parsons always tell us; but I think the people who live out of it are generally as bad or rather worse than those who live in it.” “Why, Harriet!” Beatrice was laughing, although tears were ready to fall. ‘‘ I didn’t expect to hear such remarks from you. I thought you would be prosing every day about rustic delights and rural innocence, and weeping over the iniquities of life in town.” “There is enough to weep over. But as to rustic delights, Beatrice—can I ever forget rustic selfishness and rural narrowness of mind, to say nothing of the bumptiousness which makes country folk so difficult to deal with? However, we won't waste a lovely morning COMMICOOOKS.cO©