Madcap Violet A Novel Volume I Author:William Black Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1876 Original Publisher: Macmillan and co. Description: "To Eva W. Black from her respectful friend, the author, May 1877"--Written in pen on front flyleaf. Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Fiction / Coming of Age History /... more » General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. THE LAURELS AT WOMBLEY FLAT. The Dowse family, father, mother, and son, lived near Eton, the members of the firm getting down each evening in time for dinner. If nothing but high art was known in their place in Regent Street, nothing but middle- class comfort, of a somewhat profuse order, reigned throughout The Laurels, at Wombley Flat. It was a large, irregular, white-washed house, with verandas, plenty of conservatories, French windows throwing in floods of light into the rooms, lounging easy-chairs of all sorts of shapes, old-fashioned grates, with hobs to them, and cigar ash-trays on the drawing-room mantelpiece. On Friday evening the Dowses were as usual dining together. Mrs. Dowse had been a slimand spry young burlesque-actress when Mr. Dowse married her and carried her off the stage ; she was now a portly and elderly person, with a comfortable, complexiouless face, and silvery grey hair, who dearly loved her mid-day lunch and its bottled stout, and who wore a good deal of jewellery in the evening. Her son was also fat and pale of face, parting his auburn hair in the middle, and combing it down on his forehead. He was the member of the firm who lent solemnity and mystery to its transactions. It was he who devised schemes of colouring for the interior of a house; and there was a certain vague earnestness of belie...« less