Craven.
If that gentleman was engaged, she would sit down in the general office,
and relate her latest grievance to a posse of sympathising clerks.
"And he says he won't pay the rent," was always the refrain of these
lamentations.
"It is in Ireland he thinks he is, poor soul!" she was wont to declare.
"We'll teach him different, Miss Blake," the spokesman of the party
would declare; whilst another ostentatiously mended a pen, and a
third brought down a ream of foolscap and laid it with a thump before
him on the desk.
"And, indeed, you're all decent lads, though full of your tricks,"
Miss Blake would sometimes remark, in a tone of gentle reproof. "But
if you had a niece just dying with grief, and a house nobody will live
in on your hands, you would not have as much heart for fun, I can tell
you that."
Hearing which, the young rascals tried to look sorrowful, and failed.
In the way of my profession I have met with many singular persons,
but I can safely declare I never met with any person so singular as
Miss Blake.
She was--I speak of her in the past tense, not because she is dead, but
because times and circumstances have changed since the period when we
both had to do with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in
consequence--one of the most original people who ever crossed my path.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25