Beadle's Dime Novels No. 127: Bald Eagle — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

49, BALD BEAGLE, CHAPTER Y. THE STAR OF STARS. MADAME MOonTAGNim was one of those grave, dignified widows whom we sometimes meet, who show their respect for the dead by looking “well to the ways of their household,” and their affection for his memory by taking the place of fa- ther and mother also to the children he has left, and their ten- derness for him by retaining his name, and preserving the estate intact as he would have done. Wendell Montagnie was the pride no less than the stay of the household, and a glance at the mother and gon as they stood to- gether the day after the interview with Washington, which we © have described, showed how much of the beauty of the son was inherited from the mother; hence it was the common saying that “ he was born to good luck.” The same indefinable grace was there; the bright, animated look only to be found in the finest temperaments; the slight wave of the hair; the composed demeanor, and that something, felt but not to be de- scribed, which at once inspires confidence in the observer, The mother was tall and slender; her habitual attention to the wants of those about her had given a slight stoop to her shoulders, not unbecoming, while the motions of her hands were of that wavy, directing kind which we sometimes see in old paintings, and which spring naturally from the habits of authority gently exercised. She stood now, in her loose morning robe, just within the hall, and her maidens were passing back and forth, taking the necessary orders for household labor. Pans and milk-pails glanced by, intermingled with the swing of short petticoats, ind the liberal gleams of tidy ankles, A pretty Dutch damsel, With a smart foot and coquettish boddice, was counting out skeins of linen for the loom, which hung partly upon hers, and partly upon the arms of Dame Montagnie, The mother welcomed her son with a bright open glance, and then, with more speed than heretofore, she counted the remaining skeins, and gave them into the hands of the pretty Gertude, who drop- Cconnicloooks.comn |