Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Cap'n Warren's Wards by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
page 15 of 432 (03%)
warm and cozy. The warmth was furnished, so he presently discovered,
by a steam radiator in the corner. Radiators and a bathroom! These were
modern luxuries he would have taken for granted, had Elisha Warren been
the sort of man he expected to find, the country magnate, the leading
citizen, fitting brother to the late A. Rodgers Warren, of Fifth Avenue
and Wall Street.

But the Captain Warren who had driven him to South Denboro in the rain
was not that kind of man at all. His manner and his language were as far
removed from those of the late A. Rodgers as the latter's brown stone
residence was from this big rambling house, with its deep stairs and
narrow halls, its antiquated pictures and hideous, old-fashioned wall
paper; as far removed as Miss Baker, whom the captain had hurriedly
introduced as "my second cousin keepin' house for me," was from the
dignified butler at the mansion on Fifth Avenue. Patchwork comforters
and feather beds were not, in the lawyer's scheme of things, fit
associates for radiators and up-to-date bathrooms. And certainly this
particular Warren was not fitted to be elder brother to the New York
broker who had been Sylvester, Kuhn and Graves' client.

It could not be, it COULD not. There must be some mistake. In country
towns there were likely to be several of the same name. There must be
another Elisha Warren. Comforted by this thought, Mr. Graves opened his
valise, extracted therefrom other and drier articles of wearing apparel,
and proceeded to change his clothes.

Meanwhile, Miss Abigail had descended the stairs to the sitting room.
Before a driftwood fire in a big brick fireplace sat Captain Warren in
his shirt-sleeves, a pair of mammoth carpet slippers on his feet, and
the said feet stretched luxuriously out toward the blaze.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge