The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck A Comedy of Limitations

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cities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began it by being born with red hair-Titian reds and auburns were undiscovered euphemisms in those days-and, in Lichfield, this is not regarded as pre

turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking wealth. Also young

ing, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly negligible "poor white" person,-an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" Musgrave,

the existence of the Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed) came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia Vartrey's death at her daugh

that Patricia Vartrey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners o

e time, she wrote to Patricia's daughter,-in stately, antiquated phrases that astonished the recipient not a little,-and the girl ha

lf in his quiet house for two long weeks-this utter stranger, look you!-and upset his comfort, ask him silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her

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d spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of being the inevitable person wh

as acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought u

akfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house

kfast in her room, or if it would be entirely proper for her to come to the table in o

o people's rooms; he knew what Agatha had to say upon that subject. It was not as though he were the chit's

etted all th

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dliest and cheeriest gentlewoman in the universe, but any physical illness appeared to transform her nature disastrously. She had her "attacks," she "felt badly" very often n