The lucky bag stories Author:Richard Rowe 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: THE POND IN THE WOOD. LL the best trees in Ackhurst Park have been cut down, and the fences are never mended, and the house is almost shut up. When Sir H... more »enry rides out, a coarse-looking man rides with him to take care of him, and, though his horse is not much to boast of, it is better than poor Sir Henry's. Sir Henry is a ruined, imbecile old man, who can't last long, his creditors say, and so they mean to let him die unmolested in his empty old house. He has no child or grandchild to leave it to, even if his creditors would let him. He looks very desolate, poor old man, jogging about the rushy lawns, and up and down the rides that are quite choked with rotten leaves. He never goes outside the park, because he does not like to meet people,—grown-up people, that is. The village children trespass in the park pretty much as they like, and he does not mind them. He will stop to talk to the little girls, and feel in his pockets for money to give to them, but generally finds that he has not got any. ' Lend me some pennies, Simpson,' he says to the man with him ; 'I'll be sure to pay you back.' If Simpson is in a good temper, he lends Sir Henry a few coppers; but Simpson is not often in a good temper. Whether the little girls get pennies or not, however, they always make pretty curtsies to Sir Henry, and smile as if they were fond of him; and he likes that, poor lonely old man. The old people in the village say that he was a fine, smart, frolicsome young gentleman once; but the young people can scarcely believe it when they see him stumbling along in his shabby old clothes, with his nose almost touching his horse's matted mane. Sir Henry's favourite ride (when Simpson will let him take it) is to a pond in a woody hollow, about a mile from the house. Trees grow all round the...« less