The Argosy — page 239: what you’re looking at

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

ho ho ho SEVENTEEN. I. i old walled-in garden was a pleasant place in summer afternoons. ‘The grass grew high beneath the apple-trees ; the trees spread out their wide arms and made great patches of welcome shade ; clove-pinks and tall white lilies and sweet-smelling mint and thyme grew close together amongst the currant-bushes near the wall, and all the air was sweet with perfume. I loved that garden. It was the one spot where I could breathe freely and be happy. Aunt Maria never came there. Uncle Richard, if he strolled up and down sometimes, with his pipe and Zzmes, did not frighten me. He smiled at me in a kindly way. Once he patted my head and asked if the girls were good to me ; and on one memora- ble day he had taken my chin between his hands and looked long at me, with dim eyes with a look of sorrowful remembrance in them, and then said, ‘‘ You are like your mother, Nell. God bless you, child.” Sometimes Rose and Letty, my cousins, would bring their book or needlework and sit beneath the trees reading or chatting, but that was not often. Aunt Maria kept Letty practising scales in the morn- ing and Italian songs in the afternoon ; and poor Rose got into trouble for every fresh freckle or gnat’s bite, and seldom dared venture out. And sometimes, at rarer intervals, Will Donaldson would stroll up and down the weedy paths beneath the wall, and view the peaches and talk politics with Uncle Richard; and then, letting Uncle Richard pass on, would come and talk to me instead. But Will’s presence never spoiled the garden for me. Will was not my cousin. He was Aunt Maria’s nephew. I was only Uncle Richard’s niece. He was a well-connected, prosperous, altogether satisfactory relation, as all Aunt Maria’s relations were. I was the poorest of all Uncle Richard’s nieces, and that is saying much. Will often stayed with us. Aunt Maria intended that he and Rose should marry by-and-bye; and when Will was not present, she talked of this plan quite openly. | ‘‘T do not see that you could do better, Rose,” she would say with a judicial air. ‘‘ Now J, if I had not thrown myself away upon your papa when I was too young to know any better, might have married whom I pleased. But you—you have no ‘go’ about you, Rose— and men do object so much to a skin that freckles. I was a very pretty girl—the prettiest complexion in the world ; but at seventeen I married your papa, as you know, and there was an end of every thing. But in your case it is different; you may be satisfied with Will, I think. The property is entailed, you know, and it maws* come to Will, though that other boy zs the favourite son.” COMI1EOOOKS.<@