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Janice Meredith by Paul Leicester Ford
page 95 of 806 (11%)
attendance at the double church services on Sundays, which
Mrs. Meredith never permitted to be neglected. From the
window Janice sometimes saw the groom playing in the drifts
with Clarion, but that was almost the extent of her knowledge
of his doings. It is to be confessed that she eagerly longed
to join them or, at least, to have a like sport with the dog.
Eighteenth-century etiquette, however, neither countenanced
such conduct in the quality, nor, in fact, clothed them for it.

A point worth noting at this time was connected with one
window of the parlour. Each afternoon as night shut down, it
was Peg's duty to close all the blinds, for colonial windows not
being of the tightest, every additional barricade to Boreas was
welcome, and this the servant did with exemplary care. But
every evening after tea, Janice always walked to a particular
window and, opening the shutter, looked out for a moment, as
if to see what the night promised, before she took her seat at
her tambour frame or sewing. Sometimes one of her parents
called attention to the fact that she had not quite closed the
shutters again, and she always remedied the oversight at once.
Otherwise she never looked at the window during the whole
evening, glance where she might. Presumably she still remembered
the fright her putative ghost had occasioned her,
and chose not to run the chance of another sight of him.
Almost invariably, however, in the morning she blew on the
frost upon the window of her own room and having rubbed
clear a spot, looked below, much as if she suspected ghosts
could leave tracks in the snow. In her behalf it is only fair
to say that the girls of that generation were so shut in as far
as regarded society or knowledge of men that they let their
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