The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim
page 51 of 302 (16%)
page 51 of 302 (16%)
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lived in a house so picturesque that merely to see it made you long
either to poison or to marry Mr. Dawson--preferably, I think, to poison him. These facts, stripped of the redundances with which I have garnished them, were told Fritzing on the day after his arrival at Baker's Farm by Mrs. Pearce the younger, old Mr. Pearce's daughter-in-law, a dreary woman with a rent in her apron, who brought in the bacon for Fritzing's solitary breakfast and the chop for his solitary luncheon. She also brought in a junket so liquid that the innocent Fritzing told her politely that he always drank his milk out of a glass when he did drink milk, but that, as he never did drink milk, she need not trouble to bring him any. "Sir," said Mrs. Pearce in her slow sad voice, after a glance at his face in search of sarcasm, "'tisn't milk. 'Tis a junket that hasn't junked." "Indeed?" said Fritzing, bland because ignorant. Mrs. Pearce fidgeted a little, wrestling perhaps with her conscience, before she added defiantly, "It wouldn't." "Indeed?" said Fritzing once more; and he looked at the junket through his spectacles with that air of extreme and intelligent interest with which persons who wish to please look at other people's babies. He was desirous of being on good terms with Symford, and had been very pleasant all the morning to Mrs. Pearce. That mood in which, shaken himself to his foundations by anxiety, he had shaken his fist to |
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