Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Adventures in New Guinea by Chalmers James
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 369 lines and 50445 words, and 8 pages
PAGE
THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH 1
THE MAN WITH THE NOSE 33
BEHOLD IT WAS A DREAM! 83
POOR PRETTY BOBBY 131
UNDER THE CLOAK 191
THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.
THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH,
AND
NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.
MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR.
"MY DEAREST CECILIA,
"With that suspiciousness which is so characteristic of you, you will immediately begin to hint that there must be some terrible unaccountable smell, or some odious inexplicable noise haunting the reception rooms. Nothing of the kind, the woman assured me, and she did not look as if she were telling stories. You will next suggest--remembering the rose-coloured curtains--that its last occupant was a member of the demi-monde. Wrong again. Its last occupant was an elderly and unexceptionable Indian officer, without a liver, and with a most lawful wife. They did not stay long, it is true, but then, as the housekeeper told me, he was a deplorable old hypochondriac, who never could bear to stay a fortnight in any one place. So lay aside that scepticism, which is your besetting sin, and give unfeigned thanks to St. Brigitta, or St. Gengulpha, or St. Catherine of Sienna, or whoever is your tutelar saint, for having provided you with a palace at the cost of a hovel, and for having sent you such an invaluable friend as
"Your attached "ELIZABETH DE WYNT."
"P.S.--I am so sorry I shall not be in town to witness your first raptures, but dear Artie looks so pale and thin and tall after the hooping-cough, that I am sending him off at once to the sea, and as I cannot bear the child out of my sight, I am going into banishment likewise."
MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT.
"DEAREST BESSY,
"Yours affectionately, "CECILIA MONTRESOR."
MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR.
"DEAREST CECILIA,
"Your disconsolate "BESSY."
MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT.
"Oh, my dearest Bessy, how I wish we were out of this dreadful, dreadful house! Please don't think me very ungrateful for saying this, after your taking such pains to provide us with a Heaven upon earth, as you thought.
"Yours, in great agitation, "CECILIA."
MRS. DE WYNT TO MRS. MONTRESOR.
"DEAREST CECILIA,
"Yours, "BESSY."
MRS. MONTRESOR TO MRS. DE WYNT.
"DEAREST BESSY,
"'Seven white ghostisses Sitting on seven white postisses.'
"'Fare thee well, and if for ever, Then for ever, fare thee well,'
"Your broken-hearted "CECILIA."
This is a true story.
THE MAN WITH THE NOSE.
THE MAN WITH THE NOSE.
"Let us get a map and see what places look pleasantest?" says she.
"As for that," reply I, "on a map most places look equally pleasant."
"Never mind; get one!"
I obey.
"Do you like the seaside?" asks Elizabeth, lifting her little brown head and her small happy white face from the English sea-coast along which, her forefinger is slowly travelling.
"Then we certainly will not go there," says Elizabeth, laughing. "A bilious bridegroom! alliterative but horrible! None of our friends show the least eagerness to lend us their country house."
"Oh that God would put it into the hearts of men to take their wives straight home, as their fathers did," say I, with a cross groan.
"It is evident, therefore, that we must go somewhere," returns she, not heeding the aspiration contained in my last speech, making her forefinger resume its employment, and reaching Torquay.
"I suppose so," say I, with a sort of sigh; "for once in our lives we must resign ourselves to having the finger of derision pointed at us by waiters and landlords."
"You shall leave your new portmanteau at home, and I will leave all my best clothes, and nobody will guess that we are bride and bridegroom; they will think that we have been married--oh, ever since the world began" .
I shake my head. "With an old portmanteau and in rags we shall still have the mark of the beast upon us."
"Do you mind much? do you hate being ridiculous?" asks Elizabeth, meekly, rather depressed by my view of the case; "because if so, let us go somewhere out of the way, where there will be very few people to laugh at us."
"On the contrary," return I, stoutly, "we will betake ourselves to some spot where such as we do chiefly congregate--where we shall be swallowed up and lost in the multitude of our fellow-sinners." A pause devoted to reflection. "What do you say to Killarney?" say I, cheerfully.
"There are a great many fleas there, I believe," replies Elizabeth, slowly; "flea-bites make large lumps on me; you would not like me if I were covered with large lumps."
At the hideous ideal picture thus presented to me by my little beloved I relapse into inarticulate idiocy; emerging from which by-and-by, I suggest "The Lakes?" My arm is round her, and I feel her supple body shiver though it is mid July, and the bees are booming about in the still and sleepy noon garden outside.
"Something dreadful happened to me there," she says, with another shudder. "But indeed I did not think there was any harm in it--I never thought anything would come of it."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page