Raine Chetwynd had come and gone. For a brief season his hearty voice and cheery face had gladdened the little pension. He had come with his robustness of moral fibre, his culture, his broad knowledge of the world, and his vigorous manhood, and the pulse of the community seemed to beat stronger for it. In spite of the old man’s warning, they had all expected to see in the young “professor” a pale image of his father, minus the softening charm of age. But, instead, they had been presented with a type of blond, Anglo-Saxon comeliness—tall, deep-chested, fresh-coloured, with an open, attractive face, blue-eyed and fair-moustached, which, at first sight, seemed to belong to a thousand men who rowed and cricketed, and lived honest, unparticularized lives, but on closer examination showed itself to be that of a man who could combine thought and action, the scholar and the athlete, the man of intellectual breath and refinement, and the cheery, practical man of the world. He was a man, in the specific feminine sense. He had brought into the pension the influence that Mrs. Stapleton had insisted on, with such passionate bitterness, as being needful in any man’s life. Each of the women had brightened under it, exhibiting instinctively the softer side of her nature. Mme. Popea had kept hidden from view the shapeless wrapper, adorned with cheap soiled lace, in which, much to Frau Schultz’s annoyance, she would now and then appear at déjeuner, and had tidied and curled her hair betimes, instead of leaving it till the late afternoon. In Frau Schultz a dignified urbanity had taken the place of peevish egotism. Little Miss Bunter had perked up like a frozen sparrow warmed into life, and had chirruped merrily to her canaries. The only friction that his presence had caused, had arisen between Mme. Boccard and Frâulein Klinkhardt, who had broadly hinted a request to be placed next to him at table. A pretty quarrel had resulted from Mme. Boccard’s refusal; after which Frâulein Klinkhardt went to bed for a day, and Mme. Boccard called her softly, under her breath, a German crane, which appeared to afford her much relief.
A Study In Shadows (English Edition)
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