Modern Broods; Or, Developments Unlooked For

Transcribed from the 1900 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE.
“ Youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school .” —Tennyson.
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1900
All rights reserved
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
First Edition , October , 1900. Reprinted , November , 1900.
“Whate’er is good to wish, ask that of Heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see.” —Hartley Coleridge.
The scene was a drawing-room, with old-fashioned heavy sash windows opening on a narrow brick-walled town-garden sloping down to a river, and neatly kept. The same might be said of the room, where heavy old-fashioned furniture, handsome but not new, was concealed by various flimsy modernisms, knicknacks, fans, brackets, china photographs and water-colours, a canary singing loud in the window in the winter sunshine.
“Miss Prescott,” announced the maid; but, finding no auditor save the canary, she retreated, and Miss Prescott looked round her with a half sigh of recognition of the surroundings. She was herself a quiet-looking, gentle lady, rather small, with a sweet mouth and eyes of hazel, in a rather worn face, dressed in a soft woollen and grey fur, with headgear to suit, and there was an air of glad expectation, a little flush, that did not look permanent, on her thin cheeks.
“Is it you, my dear Miss Prescott?” was the greeting of the older hostess as she entered, her grey hair rough and uncovered, and her dress of well-used black silk, her complexion of the red that shows wear and care. “Then it is true?” she asked, as the kiss and double shake of the hand was exchanged.
“May I ask? Is it true? May I congratulate you?”