Penny Plain by O. Douglas
page 50 of 350 (14%)
page 50 of 350 (14%)
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tell his guest nothing of the people he had once known.
"D'you know a house called The Rigs?" he asked him. The landlord knew it well--a quaint cottage with a pretty garden. Old Miss Alison Jardine was living in it when he came first to Priorsford; dead now, but the young folk were still in it. "Young folk?" said Peter Reid. "Yes," said the landlord, "Miss Jean Jardine and her brothers. Orphans, I'm told. Father an Anglo-Indian. Nice people? Oh, very. Quiet and inoffensive. They don't own the house, though. I hear the landlord is a very wealthy man in London. By the way, same name as yourself, sir." "Do I look like a millionaire?" asked Peter Reid, and the landlord laughed pleasantly and non-committally. The next day was sunny and Peter Reid went out for a walk. It was a different Priorsford that he had come back to. A large draper's shop with plate-glass windows occupied the corner where Jenny Baxter had rolled her toffee-balls and twisted her "gundy," and where old Davy Linton had cut joints and weighed out mince-collops accompanied by wise weather prophecies, a smart fruiterer's shop now stood furnished with a wealth of fruit and vegetables unimagined in his young days. There were many handsome shops, the streets were wider and better kept, unsightly houses had been demolished; it was a clean, prosperous-looking town, but it was different. Peter Reid (of London) would have been the first to carp at the |
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