Grumbleby Hall; Or, Who's Boy?. Or, Who's Boy? (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. VALUE OF THE THIRD FACTOR BY ANALYSIS. R. BRIAN GRUMPHY, in disposition and habits was not only retiring, but, as has been partly intimated, gloomy even to sullenness, and solitary even in society; though in this latter he was rarely found, too unsociable either to enter or be welcomed there. In his intercourse with those with whom his duties necessarily brought him in contact, he was sharp and hard,?sharp, because a rough experience had taught him that was the way to take care of number one, for whom no one else appeared to care; hard, it may be, because he had scarcely ever known any other than an indurating influence, valuable to himself, inasmuch as in his employer's often equivocal practice, it required a heart encased in a double gutta-percha covering to resist any pitying or other impulse that might otherwise inopportunely move it, and which, indeed, in earlier days had moved it, and moved it violently too; but that was past, and he was now case-proof to all such emotional experiences,?at least, as he and even others thought. But, strange perversity, something had passed the wary sentinel that kept 'watch and ward' over the citadel, and so taken possession of at least a corner thereof, that, as just evidenced by his proceedings, it had even awakened a dormant pity, if not something akin to love, hitherto crouched out of reach, as it seemed, in the said corner of that heart, but against the operation whereof he was now continually striving, but striving in vain; for, with the same stubbornness wherewith he had held out against the assault, he now as tenaciously, though involuntarily, clung to the little that had contrived to steal in. As some extenuation of this perverseness, it should be stated that the object who thus engrossed the affection Mr. Grump...