Hermy Author:Molesworth 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. MR. PETER THOMPSON. " A charming old gentleman ; I feel a sympathy for him." —Julian Hawthorne. One afternoon, about ten days after... more » the conversation in the pantry between Hermione and Edwards, which I have told you of, an old, perhaps I should rather say, an elderly, gentleman was making his way from the post-office at Sunningley to the Green Villa, where Hermy lived. The post-office was in the very centre of the little town, the Green Villa fully half a mile out of it on the Flaxingham Road, and as that road runs pretty steadily and very unmis- takeably up-hill for two or three miles out of Sunningley, " making his way " is not a bad expression for the old gentleman's progress. He toiled along, for the road was really very steep, and though only April, the weather w;is remarkably mild, and the oldgentleman rather remarkably stout. The rain and dull cloudy weather were over—spring, real bright sunny spring, had come at last; there were birds singing cheerily up in the trees, dear primroses peeping out from beneath the hedges, for the Flaxingham Road is famed for the beauty and abundance of its early primroses—everything, from the blue sky above to the fresh bright grass beneath, was looking and feeling really delicious. Anybody, everybody you would have said, could not but have enjoyed a walk on that day—anybody, it appeared, except a stout and short- tempered old gentleman. For our old gentleman's temper seemed to be of the very shortest, or else something had upset him most terribly. As he walked along, every now and then he muttered to himself, and stumped his heavy walking-stick on the ground. " Unheard-of impertinence I I'll teach them to play their tricks on me!" he said. " Resident of Sunningley for five-and-twenty years—five-and-twenty year...« less