The little beauty Author:Elizabeth Caroline Grey 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. The gossip of a small village is proverbial, particularly when there is such rich food provided for it as that afforded at Brooklands by the ill-... more »assorted pair. Many were the nods and winks, whisperings and shakings of heads, whenever the subject was mentioned, or the couple chanced to be seen, either together or separate. " Poor Frank, he has a down-look lately, hasn't he?" said Mrs Higgins, the under- gardener's wife, one of the first performers in the scandal line, to a neighbour, as they walked behind him one Sunday afternoon to church. " Where's his fine lady, I wonder ?" was the other woman's remark. " Oh, she's too delicate to walk to church, she told me t'other day; she was lying her length on a sofa, forsooth, and drawled out: ' The dear Marchioness never scarcely put her feet to the ground the last three months ;' just as if that had anything in the world to do with her." " Well, Mrs Higgins, they are both the same flesh and blood." " Yes, may be; but that's neither here nor there; you may as lief talk of some hardy wild-flower, and them stove-plants my husband is always making such a work about; the one has been born and bred up hardy, used to sharp winds—rough sod—nothing hurts them; the others reared in hot-houses—not a blast of heaven's air allowed to rest upon their heads—having constant care and nursing. This is all the same as respects women in our line and great ladies." " We have the advantage of them there, at any rate," remarked Mrs Higgins's companion. " Yes, sure, and Nelly Rose that was ought to have it too, for wasn't her mother a washerwoman, and her grandmother before her; and did not she stand at the wash-tub till she went to be nursery girl at the Court ? She ought to have some good hard-working blood in her veins, I...« less