: The Story of a Doctor's Telephone—Told by His Wife by Firebaugh Ellen M - Wit and humor; Physicians Anecdotes

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

DAUGHTERS OF LITTLE GREY HOUSE

ITS INMATES

"How do you know when you're a young lady?" asked Roberta Grey.

She was sitting before the ancient mahogany dressing-table in her--and Wythie's--room, unblushingly regarding herself in the mirror, while the fingers of both hands, supporting her brilliant face, experimented with changes in it by pushing up the delicate eyebrows into quite a celestial angle.

Frances Silsby, from the rocking-chair by the window, and Wythie on the foot of the bed, laughed.

"I know I'm young by the record in the Bible--and by the way I feel," said Frances. "And I know I'm a lady by the company I keep, since 'birds of a feather,' and so forth." Frances made a deep salaam almost to the floor, taking advantage of the forward tilt of the rocking-chair to deepen it.

"That's the retort courteous, Francie. You will be an ornament to the diplomatic circle when you are Lady Ambassadress to the court of St. James'. But I should like to know how to be sure one's reluctant feet have crossed the meeting point of the brook and the river," insisted Rob.

"If one had to put on shoes and stockings, for instance, after she ceased to stand where the brook and river meet, she would know that she had waded in and had come out on the other side, a young lady," Rob went on with slightly heightened colour, ignoring her sister. "That's it; I have it!" she cried, wheeling around to look at her audience outside the glass. "It is something of the sort--it's the hair! I am just eighteen, but I wear my hair in a braid, with a big bow where it is turned up on the top of my head. If I discarded that bow, and made a great soft knot of hair 'on the top of my head, in the place where the wool ought to grow'"--Rob chanted this direct quotation--"I should be a young lady! I think I'll do it!"

She jumped up, snatched a kimono from a hook in the closet, threw it over her shoulders, dropped back into her chair before the dressing-table and in a twinkling had the pins out of her braid; the bow, badge of young girlhood, thrown on the table, and her rebellious, red-brown hair tumbling about her slender shoulders in a mass of beautiful colour.

Rob arose as she spoke and faced her sister and her friend. She was tall, slender, radiant with nervous energy and quick wit; pretty, yet charming more than pretty. The sort of girl that she had promised to be; one who would carry everything before her with her high courage, high standards, and her flashing charm of variety in colouring and expression. Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always; pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple, unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse Rob. She flashed on the scene, and instantly every eye was filled with the variable charm of her face, which defied regular laws of beauty. Every heart went out to the warmth of her magnetic presence and kindliness of nature; while no one could be sceptic enough to doubt her crystal purity of purpose and truth.

Oswyth loved her with adoring love, and Frances regarded her as the embodiment of all her ideals, just as she had regarded her from her first meeting with Rob at the great age of three.

In the fifteen months that had passed since Rob's resolution had prevented the sacrifice of her beloved "Patergrey's" legacy to his family, and had secured for the Greys the full value of the patent into which he had poured the best effort of years of his pathetic life, both Oswyth and Rob had blossomed into girls of nineteen, and eighteen respectively, and into a fulness of life and happiness such as they could never have attained but that the stress and strain of anxiety and even want, had thus been removed. They were not wealthy people, by any means, these blithe and busy Greys, but they possessed, now, what seemed contrastingly like wealth to them, and which was quite enough to satisfy the true standards and tastes which their noble mother had given them. And the little grey house, which had always seemed rather like one of themselves than a mere house, had blossomed with its daughters into fuller adornment and cheerfulness during this year and a quarter. Many pretty modern things had crept in to take their places among the riches of inherited mahogany, pewter and china which were the little grey house's glory and pride.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!