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Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915

"Peter: a novel of which he is not the hero"

Morris, and he said torture
couldn't drag it out of him. That old Major that Uncle Peter
thinks so much of came near spoiling the surprise, but Aunt
Felicia said she would take care of him in the back of the house--
and she did; and I mounted guard at the top of the stairs before
anybody could get hold of you. Isn't it too lovely?--and, do you
know, there are real live frogs in that pond and you can hear them
croak? And now tell me about daddy, and how he gets on without
me."
But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or
anything that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel--the
transition had been too sudden and too startling. To be fired from
a gun loaded with care, hard work and anxiety--hurled through
hours of winter travel and landed at a dinner-table next some
charming young woman, was an experience which had occurred to him
more than once in the past two years. But to be thrust still
further into space until he reached an Elysium replete with
whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless
blossoms--the whole tucked away in a cosey arbor containing a seat
for two--AND NO MORE--and this millions of miles away, so far as
he could see, from the listening ear or watchful eye of mortal man
or woman--and with Ruth, too--the tips of whose fingers were so
many little shrines for devout kisses--that was like having been
transported into Paradise.


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