Nellie Maturin's Victory Author:Adeline Sergeant General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1905 Original Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton 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 yo... more »u can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV KING'S THORPE Nellie never forgot the first moments of her arrival at the Pegrams' house. They were indelibly stamped upon her memory. The journey from London had been pleasant enough, though quiet. Dr. Collet had left his acquaintances after lunch, and had not reappeared, though Nellie had cherished a secret hope that he might travel with them to King's Thorpe, but she looked for him in vain on the platform, and she fancied that Mrs. Pegram watched for him, too. He did not travel by that train, however, and Mrs. Pegram was too sleepy and tired to enter into conversation, so that Nellie sat silently by the window and watched the long shadows lying over the meadow-lands, and the rays of the setting sun flashing in reflectedglory from the windows of the houses and churches which she saw. She had been wonderfully little away from home, and the country north of London was perfectly new to her. In her own mind she called it a new world which she was about to enter, and she wondered fearfully whether it would be bright or dark. At the station two vehicles were in waiting for the travellers. One was a light cart for the reception of Nellie's luggage ; the other was a lumbering old chaise, drawn by a very ancient white pony, which Mrs. Pegram herself drove. She climbed vigorously into the driver's seat, shouting meanwhile directions of various sorts to old Jabez, who had charge of the cart. Nellie was startled by the loudness of her voice and the directness of her language as she rebuked the old man for some small dereliction of duty. The girl glanced app...« less