“The young ladies are in the garden,” said the Duchess. “Don’t you want to go and pick a rose?” she added with a gracious smile, and the nearest approach to a wink that was consistent with her patrician bearing and aquiline nose.
Lothaw went and presently returned with the blushing Coriander upon his arm.
“Bless you, my children,” said the Duchess. Then turning to Lothaw, she said: “You have simply fulfilled and accepted your inevitable destiny. It was morally impossible for you to marry out of this family. For the present, the Church of England is safe.”
THE HAUNTED MAN
BY CH—R—S D—CK—N—S.
A CHRISTMAS STORY [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
PART I
THE FIRST PHANTOM
Don’t tell me that it wasn’t a knocker. I had seen it often enough, and I ought to know. So ought the three-o’clock beer, in dirty high-lows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And so ought for the matter of that, etc., etc., etc.