Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

transept as the dark fell in, and flitted—taking a fresh direction every night—about the Close, disappearing for a while in house after house, and finally emerging again when the night sky was paling. She could sce nothing of it, she said, but that it was a moving form: only she had an impression that when it returned to the church, as it seemed to do in the end of the dream, it turned its head: and then, she could not tell why, but she thought it had red eyes. Worby remembered hearing the old lady tell this Ream at a tea-party in the house of the chapter clerk. Its recurrence might, perhaps, he said, be taken as a symptom of approaching illness; at any rate before the end of September the old lady was in her grave, The interest excited by the restoration of this great church was not confined to its own county. One day that summer an F.S.A., of sorne celebrity, visited the place. His business was to write an account of the discoveries that had been made, for the Socicty of Antiquaries, and his wife, who accompanied him, was to make a series of iflustra- tive drawings for his report. In the morning she employed herself in waking a general sketch of the choir; in the afternoon she devoted her- sclf to details. She first drew the newly-exposed altar-tomb, and when that was finished, she called her husband's attention to a beautiful piece of diaper-ornament on the sercen just bebind it, which had, like the tomb itself, been completely concealed by the pulpit. Of course, he said, an illustration of that must be made; so she seated herself on the tomb and began a careful drawing which occupied her till dusk. Her husband had by this time finished his work of measuring and description, and they agreed that it was time to be getting back to their hotel. “You may as well brush my skirt, Frank,” said the lady, “it must have got covered with dust, Pm sure.” He obeyed dutifully; but, after a moment, he said, “I don’t know whether you value this dress particularly, my dear, but I’m inclined to think it’s seen its best days. There’s a great bit of it gone.” “Gone? Where?” said she. “I don’t know where it’s gone, but it’s off at the bottom edge behind here.” She polled it hastily into sight, and was horvified to find a jagged tear extending some way into the substance of the stufl: very much, she said, as if a dog kad rent it away. The dress was, in any case, hope- lessly spoilt, to her great vexation, and though they looked every- where, the missing picce could not be found. There were many ways, they concluded, in which the injury might have come about, for the choir was full of old bits of woodwork with nails sticking out of them. Finally, they could only suppose that one of these had caused the mis- chief, and that the workmen, who had been about all day, had carried off the particular piece with the fragment of dress still attached to it. It was about this time, Worby thought, that his little dog began to wear an anxious expression when the hour for it to be put into the shed in the back yard approached. (Mor his mother had ordained that 108 comichbooks.com