The Argosy — page 265: what you’re looking at

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

244 Straight from the Plain. condescending to add that it was a model of her taken from the figure on the Plain. It was about the size of a doll. What a goose Roger Brooke must be to bring home that !” Lily rambled on, but Anna Castleton heard her not. Her thoughts had gone back to the past. She was recalling a day long ago: when the handsome and rich young heir, Roger Brooke, about to set out on his travels, had stood outside this very window, his arms on its sill, as he talked to her. Love there had been between them, but never a word of it spoken. It was hardly likely, she sometimes had said to herself, that he would choose Aer, the poor daughter of the poor Rector. ‘And what shall I bring you home, my little Anna?” he had asked, his fine hazel eyes going out to her with admiration, his voice suddenly grown tender as a love-song. ‘* Nothing,” she had answered, blushing. ‘But, yes ; it must be. Choose something, my timid dove, and it shall be brought to you, though I go to the ends of the earth to find | Sa “Bring me Lot’s wife ; straight from the Plain,” she had said then, believing that, of all impossible things she could mention, that was the most impossible. ‘Be it so,” concluded Roger. ‘‘T’ll bring her to you straight from the Plain.” And now if Lily Sandford might be believed, here it was—Lot’s wife. He had remembered it; must be remembering fer. ‘Through- out all these months, when the silence to her had seemed so dreary, she had not been forgotten. Little communication had been received from Roger: a letter now and then (months between) to her father, the Rector, who had been his tutor in boyhood ; a letter or two to his man of business, old Lawyer Sandford ; a note or so to the house- keeper at the Court, Mrs. Parker; but never anything to Anna. Lily departed, remarking that her aunt would be setting the crier_ to work. Anna dropped her face in her hands in a rush of sweet memories of the past, of brilliant fancies and anticipations for the future ; and then common sense came back with a rush. “How worse than foolish Iam!” she cried, very much ashamed of herself. ‘‘ Because he has brought home that ridiculous model of salt—which probably may be meant for his own gallery—I am con- juring up these dreams! Why, it means no more for me than if he had brought me a model of the Pyramids in sugar!” Resolutely taking up her work, she was stitching away, all business- like, when she saw their servant, Molly, come whisking down the side path of the garden with some salad in her apron, which she had been to cut. “ Molly,” she called out, looking from the window—and the woman came up. ‘ Molly, you need not make that sweet omelette for dinner which I ordered. Papa dines with Dr, Reeves this even- Gomichookssco m