Kitty Deane of Reed Farm

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MRS. BRITAIN FEELS THAT SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN. i T was damper under the trees at Burnhurst than even at the Farm?much damper than it had been upon the open road, although the Burnhurst trees were not yet in leaf, and showed little more than swelling buds, which seemed, if nothing else did, to rejoice in the moist atmosphere. But on the softer ground of the shrubbery drive, the feet of Alice's pony, and of the horse on which the groom who followed her was riding, made scarcely any sound at all, as the girls, Kitty still keeping pace with the little bay, turned aside from the front door to the stable entrance, at which Alice was frequently in the habit of dismounting. We will go in the back way and see what Mrs. Britain has to say to us, she said, shivering slightly as she gathered up the folds of her habit; while Kitty, mindful of the spotless crumb-cloth spread over the crimson drugget in Mrs, Britain's sitting-room, took Shrimp in her arms preparatory to carefully wiping his feet as well as her own upon the door mat. The house keeper, though always delighted to seeAlice, considered it only right to meet her at first with reproaches for having been absent at luncheon time. On this drear day, too, when, if ever I felt in my life that something would happen, I feel it in my bones now, she exclaimed. Perhaps it's only the rheumatism that you feel, Alice suggested, a little nervously, for Mrs. Britain's presages of evil alarmed the girl, who was not herself insensible to the depressing influence of the state of the atmosphere. Don't talk about something happening; it frightens me; the day looks so unreal and strange too; light without sunshine often does, I think. It's like a day in a dream. I don't like it. She was a sensitive little cr...