Jan Hunkum's Money. the Fair-Lover. the Mother. the Summer Christmas Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ...almost be better to go with a meek little brown-eyed thing like that than with such a vixen as you." "Smooth words, please," said the girl, angrily. "Why don't you go with her yourself, then? Don't overcharge, she ain't got much. None but the lowest of the low let themselves out at the fair." "You're a brute," he said again. He was a man of few ideas. She turned round suddenly and struck him a sounding slap on the cheek. The quondam corporal straightened himself; a pink flush spread round the red mark on his fair skin. "I never strike a woman," he said, and, saluting, left her. Anneke had gone back into the house. She walked slowly, meditating. She did not hate the innkeeper's daughter, for she could not honestly have wished her ill, but if there was anyone on earth she loathed and dreaded, that person was Truda Batsy. "Truda, eh?--with her lover?" said old Pete. "I thought so, but I couldn't make sure because of your damned geraniums." She went to mix her uncle his evening glass of brandy and water--cold from June to September, hot from September to June: she had done that nightly now for half a dozen years. He always grumbled over the mixture, yet once, on the single occasion when she had spent a few days in bed, he had told her, grumbling, that no one could prepare it as well as she. "What a good-looking man he is," pursued old Pete. "No wonder that, out in the Indies, he could bring down sweethearts like cocoa-nuts " "Was he very bad?" asked Anneke, with an innocent thrill. "Bad? What a fool-girl's question Is it bad when you potter about your stupid bit of a garden, if you smell at the stocks and wallflowers and things? What are they for else? Though, d...