Schooled with Briars

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: 19 CHAPTER III. Walter Harvey learnt to esteem the ducking which he had received on that memorable race day as one of the luckiest of accidents. He was too much of a gentleman not to feel a little disgust at the kind of society to which he was limited; and now, in Mrs Le Marchant's house, he found an escape in some measure from it; indeed, Mrs Le Marchant, who was not wanting in good-nature, and who had conceived rather a liking for the pleasant merry- hearted lad, as she deemed him, taking pity on his solitariness, often renewed her invitations to her little dinners, and also introduced him to some of the neighbouring gentry. Douglas came down now and then during the vacations. The cousins were really attached to each other, and it was always a bright day for Walter when he received a line from Douglas, asking if hecould be taken in and done for in a certain dingy bed-room in Walter's lodgings. Perhaps the fact that Harvey was the near relative and very dear friend of a young gentleman, who bore the reputation of being the heir to very extensive estates, militated somewhat in his favour with Mrs Le Marchant, for her mental activity was by no means confined within the narrow limits of subscription-hunting. Nothing of the kind. She was far too keen a sportswoman to reserve her shot for that particular kind of game alone. Having due regard to the future interests of her children, she was of those who are full of every artful manoeuvre which could promote the object she had in view, viz. their ultimate alliance with men of rank and position, and to obtain which result she well knew that the first step was to secure and maintain what is called a good position in society. Nor was her path quite smooth, for the malicious say that she pushed and contrived and struggled to get...