Dr. Wainwright's Patient (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: dead ! and Paul must have left over eighty thousand !" said Captain Derinzy to his wife, when they were in their own room at the hotel after the will had been read. " Our Paul shall have the eighty thousand," said Mrs. Derinzy in reply. " The devil he shall!" said the Captain. " Who will give it him?" " The guardians of his wife !" said Mrs. Derinzy CHAPTER VI. MRS. STOTHARD. Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp were by no means the only persons in Beachborough to whom Mrs. Stothard's position in the household at the Tower afforded subject-matter for gossip. It may be safely asserted that there never was a tea-drinking, followed?as was usually the case among the better clases in that hospitable neighbourhood?by a consumption of alcohol "hot with," at which Mrs. Stothard was not served up as a toothsome morsel, and forthwith torn into shreds, if not by the teeth, at least by the tongues of the assembled company. To those simple minds, all social standing was fixed and unalterable ?one must either be mistress or servant; the lines of demarcation were strongly defined; they knew of no softening gradations; and they could not understand Mrs. Stothard. " She hev' her dinner by herself, and her own teapot allays brought to her own room?leastways, 'cept when she do fetch it herself, Miss Annette bein' sleepy or out of sorts, and not likin' to be disturbed by the servants." Such was the report which Nancy Wickstead, who had gone to live as nursemaid up at the Tower soon after the arrival of the family, brought down about this redoubtable woman. The villagers only knew her by report, by crumbs and fragments of rumours dropped by Nancy Wick- stead when she came down among her old familiars for an "evening out," or by the tradesmen who called at the house, and who drew largely on their...