“Well, sir, my advice to you is, don’t ever charge the public admission to your private bazaar—Villa Bizarre, eh?—for the law would be down on you for obtaining money under false pretences. And I can promise you that all your ‘royal’ pepper pots and powder puffs and poodles and petits pois—if they sold for what they’re worth—wouldn’t bring in enough to pay your fines.”
“I have not a poodle in my collection,” Mr. Hibbert Mearely retorted with icy dignity, and showed the “brutal person” the door.
Perhaps it was not strange, therefore, that little Rosamond Cort, equipped by Nature from the beginning to be a connoisseur in happiness, should have found out that the crown of wifehood bestowed on her by Hibbert Mearely was something less than royal, and that the joys which had glistered to her through the window panes of Villa Rose were golden only on the surface.
CHAPTER IV
Down the hill and down the valley, where the crossroads pointed east to Poplars Vale and west to Roseborough, and the low, gray stone bridge with its mossy ooze led over the winding river toward Trenton Waters, three miles north, stood a stone tower. In it an old ship’s bell hung, which, so report said, had once rung meal hours and lullabies and other clock stations for a captain and crew whose gory barque flew the “Jolly Roger.” The aged pensioner, who collected the tow-path tolls, rang the strokes of the hour on this bell from six A.M. until six P.M., and, so closely did the low, curving hills advance to smile upon each other from both sides of the running water that they made a channel for the sound—like a great, twisted, golden horn—so that the bell-tones, rung out at the crossroads, were heard at Roseborough and at Poplars Vale and even rolled their echoes, when the wind was kind, upon the town of Trenton Waters.
Nine o’clock! Rosamond heard it pealing as she reached the terrace.
“I must hurry to find whatever it is I am looking for,” she said, “because my Wonderful Day won’t wait. It will move on, hour by hour, just like any other day.”
The house was on a jut of the hill, sheer above the gravel road and midway from the summit. The road must make a long detour about the grounds of Villa Rose ere it could continue its progress round and over the hilltops and on toward more modern and populous districts of Old Canada. At the foot of the incline was the village proper, occupying three streets in triangle about a combined courthouse, police station and gaol, the latter seldom visited even by the constables. On one street corner the post office stood, flanked by a few small houses. The other two streets shared between them the business buildings of Roseborough; such as Bilkin’s meat market and hardware store; Miss Jenny’s millinery and dressmaking establishment; George Dollop’s drugs, stationery and lending library, with John Dollop, plumber, and James Dollop, undertaker, adjoining, and Horace Ruggle of the telegraph office next door; and Brandon’s stables and feed store.