Produced by Daniel Fromont <daniel.fromont@cnc.fr>
April 20052005 is the 150th anniversary of Mrs. Hungerford's birthday.
Mrs. HUNGERFORD (Margaret Wolfe Hamilton) (1855?-1897),
A little Rebel (1890) Lovell edition
Author of "Her Last Throw," "April's Lady,""Faith and Unfaith," etc. etc.
Montreal:
JOHN LOVELL & SON,
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1891, by John
Lovell & Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and
Statistics at Ottawa.
"Perplex'd in the extreme."
"The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid andbeautiful."
The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking thevery picture of dismay. Two letters lie before him; one is in hishand, the other is on the table-cloth. Both are open; but of one,the opening lines—that tell of the death of his old friend—areall he has read; whereas he has read the other from start to finish,already three times. It is from the old friend himself, written aweek before his death, and very urgent and very pleading. Theprofessor has mastered its contents with ever-increasingconsternation.
Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that hisface—(the index of that excellent part of him)—has, for themoment, undergone a complete change. Any ordinary acquaintance nowentering the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might bewhittled down to quite a little few), would hardly have known him.For the abstraction that, as a rule, characterizes his features—theway he has of looking at you, as if he doesn't see you, thatharasses the simple, and enrages the others—is all gone! Not atrace of it remains. It has given place to terror, open andunrestrained.
"A girl!" murmurs he in a feeble tone, falling back in his chair.And then again, in a louder tone of dismay—"A girl!" He pausesagain, and now again gives way to the fear that is destroyinghim—"A grown girl!"
After this, he seems too overcome to continue his reflections, sogoes back to the fatal letter. Every now and then a groan escapeshim, mingled with mournful remarks, and extracts from the sheet inhis hand—
"Poor old Wynter! Gone at last!" staring at the shaking signature atthe end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icyclutch that should prevent the poor hand from forming ever againeven such sadly erratic characters as these. "At least," glancing atthe half-read letter on the cloth—"this tells me so. Hissolicitor's, I suppose. Though what Wynter could want with asolicitor—— Poor old fellow! He was often very good to me in theold days. I don't believe I should have done even as much as Ihave done, without him… It must be fully ten years since hethrew up his work here and went to Australia!… ten years. The girlmust have been born before he went,"—glances at letter—"'Mychild, my beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love, will beleft entirely alone. Her mother died nine years ago. She is onlyseventeen, and the world lies before her, and never a soul in it toc