MODERN BROODS, or DEVELOPMENTS UNLOOKED FOR




CHAPTER I--TORTOISES AND HARES



"Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of Heaven,
Though it be what thou canst not hope to see."
- HARTLEY COLERIDGE.


The scene was a drawing-room, with old-fashioned heavy sash windows
opening on a narrow brick-walled town-garden sloping down to a river,
and neatly kept. The same might be said of the room, where heavy
old-fashioned furniture, handsome but not new, was concealed by
various flimsy modernisms, knicknacks, fans, brackets, china
photographs and water-colours, a canary singing loud in the window in
the winter sunshine.

"Miss Prescott," announced the maid; but, finding no auditor save the
canary, she retreated, and Miss Prescott looked round her with a half
sigh of recognition of the surroundings. She was herself a quiet-
looking, gentle lady, rather small, with a sweet mouth and eyes of
hazel, in a rather worn face, dressed in a soft woollen and grey fur,
with headgear to suit, and there was an air of glad expectation, a
little flush, that did not look permanent, on her thin cheeks.