She had defended and stood by him, when he brought home a
pretty little brown-eyed, brown haired creature, whose only fault was
her poverty and the fact that she was a chorus singer in the operas in
London, where Hugh McPherson had seen and fallen in love with her. Two
years she lived at Stoneleigh, happy as the singing birds which flew
about the place and built their nests in the yews, and then one summer
morning she died, and left to Dorothy's care a little boy of three
weeks, who, without much attention from any one as regarded his moral
and mental culture, had scrambled along somehow, and had reached the age
of sixteen without a single serious thought as to his future and without
ever having made the least exertion for himself. Dorothy and Anthony,
the two servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue
to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle,
the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he
thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which
amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot
summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the
shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which
penetrated through the overchanging boughs and fell in patches upon him.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238