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The Fortunate Youth by William John Locke
page 126 of 395 (31%)
asleep.

The sudden plunging of strong young paws into her body and a series
of sharp barks and growls awakened her with a start, and, for a
second, still dazed by the drowsy invocation of the bumble-bee, she
saw approaching her the gallant fellow who had been pierced through
the heart by a Soudanese spear in eighteen eighty-five. He was dark
and handsome, and, by a trick of coincidence, was dressed in loose
knickerbocker suit, just as he was when he had walked up that very
avenue to say his last good-bye. She remained for a moment tense,
passively awaiting co-ordination of her faculties. Then clear awake,
and sending scudding the dear ghosts of the past, she sat up, and
catching the indignant spaniel by the collar, looked with a queer,
sudden interest at the newcomer. He was young, extraordinarily
beautiful; but he staggered and reeled like a drunken man. The
spaniel barked his respectable disapproval. In his long life of
eighteen months he had seen many people, postmen and butcher boys
and casual diggers in kitchen gardens, whose apparent permit to
exist in Drane's Court had been an insoluble puzzle; but never had
he seen so outrageous a trespasser. With unparalleled moral courage
he told him exactly what he thought of him. But the trespasser did
not hear. He kept on advancing. Miss Winwood rose, disgusted, and
drew herself up. The young man threw out his hands towards her,
tripped over the three-inch-high border of grass, and fell in a
sprawling heap at her feet.

He lay very still. Ursula Winwood looked down upon him. The shiny
brown spaniel took up a strategic position three yards away and
growled, his chin between his paws. But the more Miss Winwood
looked, and her blue eyes were trained to penetrate, the more was
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