Miss Brown A Novel Author:Vernon Lee 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: 19 CHAPTER II. Hamlin felt rather contrite and humiliated as he sat down at the square table, with the two eldest children, pert little rosy and flaxen thi... more »ngs, on either side of him, and the three little ones staring at him, and then suddenly making convulsive dives under the table-cloth and behind each other's shoulders opposite. He was the furthest possible removed from the kind of young man who persecutes pretty housemaids. Whatever vagaries he might have had in his life, they were not of that sort; and now, although he had merely intended to ask for some breakfast, he found himself somehow in the position of pushing his presence upon a servant girl. He was vexed with himself, and became very grave, scarcely answering the chatter of the children by his side. " And you know," said the eldest child, a pretty little minx of eleven, fully conscious of her charms, " mamma told us you were the great poet, and she read us a poem of yours about SirTroilus. Mamma always reads poetry to us—and we liked it so much,—and I liked all about where he kisses the lady so much, and her purple dress with the golden roses, and then about Love, where he comes and takes her by the throat, and chokes her, and makes her feel like a furnace. Mamma says it's just like love. Mr Thaddeus Smith was in love with the gardener's girl when he came here last year, mamma says." " Good heavens I" thought Hamlin, " what a mamma and what children !" " And mamma told us to get some myrtles and put them in your room," blurted out a smaller one. " Hush, Winnie I You know you shouldn't tell," said the eldest. "And you know," insisted the younger, in her little, impertinent lisp, " mamma said we should put the myrtles, because you made poems about myrtles; and we were to have had on our best frocks, ...« less