Lady Baltimore (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: KINGS PORT TALKS OF course I had at once left the letters of introduction which Aunt Carola had given me; but in my ignorance of Kings Port hours I had found everybody at dinner when I made my first round of calls between half-past three and five an experience particularly regrettable, since I had hurried my own dinner on purpose, not then aware that the hours at my boarding-house were the custom of the whole town.1 Upon an afternoon some days later, having seen in the extra looking-glass, which I had been obliged to provide for myself, that the part in my back hair was perfect, I set forth again, better informed. As I rang the first doorbell, another visitor came up the steps, a beautiful old lady in widow's dress, a cardcase in her hand. " Have you rung, sir ?" said she, in a manner at once gentle and voluminous. " Yes, madam." Nevertheless she pulled it again. " It doesn't always ring," she explained, " unless one is accustomed to it, which you are not." She addressed me with authority, exactly like Aunt Carola, and with even greater precision inher good English and good enunciation. Unlike the girl at the Exchange, she had no accent; her language was simply the perfection of educated utterance; it also was racy with the free censori- ousness which civilized people of consequence are apt to exercise the world over. " I was sorry to miss your visit," she began (she knew me, you see, perfectly); " you will please to come again soon, and console me for my disappointment. I am Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and my house is in Le Maire Street,1 as you have been so civil as to find out. And how does your Aunt Carola do in these contemptible times ? You can tell her from me that vulgarization is descending, even upon Kings Port." 1 These hours, even since my vi...