The Marplot

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 II. UNCLES AMONG THE RUINS. Me. Humphry Wrixon sat in his favourite corner of the old walled garden of Farinder Priory. It was December, but the day was so genial that he, a lover of warmth, had left his armchair in the library and brought out his books. Humphry was a bachelor of forty-five, plump and clean-shaven, his contented countenance so like that of the representative monk of the painter that, differently clad, he might have passed for one of the ten canons of the order of St. Augustine who had once sought seclusion in this quiet corner of the world. The warm wall behind him was bright with blossoms of yellow jasmine; a robin sang in an apple-tree; pleasant country sounds came from the distance, ? the lowing of cattle, the talk of the rookery, the hum of the threshing- machine, suddenly falling half an octave in tone as a new sheaf went between the rollers. On his knee was a copy of The Golden Ass of Apuleius, in his mouth an enormous pipe. He had excited some curiosity in the neighbourhood when he had joined his brother at Farinder; but, as there was no lady in the establishment, littlemore was known about him now than when he first came. Even his brother had been surprised at his choice, and had received no other explanation for it than that the Priory contained an excellent cellar in which he could keep his wine, and a room which could be converted into a good library for his books. His brother was fifteen years his senior; he had retired early from the navy, and, after wandering about for a few years an aimless widower, had bought the ruined Priory, which was a fragment of family property. He was a man who had been proposed by nature as an artist, and disposed by a stern parent in the navy. The old buildings were to him a sacred charge; it was his daily...