On the other hand
they had all George Eliot's writings, and two photographs of the Sistine
Madonna. Ransom rapped with his stick on the lintel of the door, but no
one came to receive him; so he made his way into the parlour, where he
observed that his cousin Olive had as many German books as ever lying
about. He dipped into this literature, momentarily, according to his
wont, and then remembered that this was not what he had come for and
that as he waited at the door he had seen, through another door, opening
at the opposite end of the hall, signs of a small verandah attached to
the other face of the house. Thinking the ladies might be assembled
there in the shade, he pushed aside the muslin curtain of the back
window, and saw that the advantages of Miss Chancellor's summer
residence were in this quarter. There was a verandah, in fact, to which
a wide, horizontal trellis, covered with an ancient vine, formed a kind
of extension. Beyond the trellis was a small, lonely garden; beyond the
garden was a large, vague, woody space, where a few piles of old timber
were disposed, and which he afterwards learned to be a relic of the
shipbuilding era described to him by Doctor Prance; and still beyond
this again was the charming lake-like estuary he had already admired.
His eyes did not rest upon the distance; they were attracted by a figure
seated under the trellis, where the chequers of sun, in the interstices
of the vine leaves, fell upon a bright-coloured rug spread out on the
ground.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187