and, after being numerously signed, was to be carried
to Mr. Prendergast by three delegates representing
the intellect, morality, and wealth of Milby.
The intellect, you perceive, was to be personified
in Mr. Dempster, the morality in Mr. Budd, and the
wealth in Mr. Tomlinson; and the distinguished triad
was to set out on its great mission, as we have seen,
on the third day from that warm Saturday evening when
the conversation recorded in the previous chapter took
place in the bar of the Red Lion.
It was quite as warm on the following Thursday evening,
when Mr. Dempster and his colleagues were to return
from their mission to Elmstoke Rectory; but it was
much pleasanter in Mrs. Linnet’s parlour than
in the bar of the Red Lion. Through the open
window came the scent of mignonette and honeysuckle;
the grass-plot in front of the house was shaded by
a little plantation of Gueldres roses, syringas, and
laburnums; the noise of looms and carts and unmelodious
voices reached the ear simply as an agreeable murmur,
for Mrs. Linnet’s house was situated quite on
the outskirts of Paddiford Common; and the only sound
likely to disturb the serenity of the feminine party
assembled there, was the occasional buzz of intrusive
wasps, apparently mistaking each lady’s head
for a sugar-basin. No sugar-basin was visible
in Mrs. Linnet’s parlour, for the time of tea
was not yet, and the round table was littered with
books which the ladies were covering with black canvass
as a reinforcement of the new Paddiford Lending Library.
Miss Linnet, whose manuscript was the neatest type
of zigzag, was seated at a small table apart, writing
on green paper tickets, which were to be pasted on
the covers. Miss Linnet had other accomplishments
besides that of a neat manuscript, and an index to
some of them might be found in the ornaments of the
room. She had always combined a love of serious
and poetical reading with her skill in fancy-work,
and the neatly-bound copies of Dryden’s ‘Virgil,’
Hannah More’s ‘Sacred Dramas,’ Falconer’s
‘Shipwreck,’ Mason ’On Self-Knowledge,’
‘Rasselas,’ and Burke ‘On the Sublime
and Beautiful,’ which were the chief ornaments
of the bookcase, were all inscribed with her name,
and had been bought with her pocket-money when she
was in her teens. It must have been at least
fifteen years since the latest of those purchases,
but Miss Linnet’s skill in fancy-work appeared
to have gone through more numerous phases than her
literary taste; for the japanned boxes, the alum and
sealing-wax baskets, the fan-dolls, the ‘transferred’
landscapes on the fire-screens, and the recent bouquets
of wax-flowers, showed a disparity in freshness which
made them referable to widely different periods.
Wax-flowers presuppose delicate fingers and robust
patience, but there are still many points of mind and
person which they leave vague and problematic; so
I must tell you that Miss Linnet had dark ringlets,
Print
Word
PDF
