The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1897-10-01
CHAPTER VI.

| July, with it's roses and lilies. blossoms
ing lines, and long sultry days, and lin
gering sunsets late into the dewy night.
was over. 1t was August, and though
summer was still lovely in the land, the
summer evenings were shortening, the
roses were waning little, as to the limit
less nrofusion of bloom; while here and
there those flowers that are harbingers of
autumn began to show in the castle gar
! dens; gaudy dahlias, oldworld holly
hooks: flaming suntlowers, staring at the
blue sky with great round, brown faces
in ragged yellow night caps against Il
background Of gray stone wall.
Stella's new life had begun. 1t was
verify a new life; so entirely different
from the old one that it seemed to the
child as if she had died and been born
again. in the same place, but with an
! other personality. Stella lived in the ser
wants quarters now, and looked out of
the windows which all opened upon the
stable yard, Il great stony desert, whose
only picturesque feature was the pump,
with it's stone basin, round which a coach
man, with IL love of the beautiful, had
planted some nasturtiums.
Oh, how dull the life was! How dreary
and monotonous, despite it's clatter The
great dinner in the servants hall, the
steaming joints, the monster pudding. the
all-pervading smell of beer; the male un-
derlings all clustered at the end Of the
table, having their own conversation and
their own whispered jokelets, digging
each other in the ribs, exploding, with full
mouths, into foolish, spluttering laughter.
Then the long afternoon; sitting at work.
hemming kitchen cloth, perhaps, by the
Al
where all the summer air was scented
with stables.
The hourly suffering of her days. Sleep
less nights and loss of appetite soon had
their effect. Stella began to look very ill
worse than she had looked even when
she first got up from her bed of fever.
Betsy was anxious about her; took her
aside and questioned her. Why did she
look so miserable?
Stella burst into tears and unburdened
her soul She was altogether unhappy
She hated the still-room, she hated Mid
dlellan; but most of all she hated the
room where she slept and the chatter Of
the maids.
There was Il little room on the floor over
the servants dormitOries, which was
mostly given over to linen closets and box
once by valet. 1t was very small and
had sloping ceiling, but the dormer win
dow commanded sidelong peep of the
park-just about as much as that fine
view of the sea put forward by a harden
ed lodging house keeper-and Betsy, who
knew her charge better than any one else,
fanced that this little room would be as
a haven of rest to Stella. James, the
foot,r.u who WAS n handy youth. might
nut up a shelf or two for her, and byand-
by perhaps Betsy would be able to get a
few of those books-lesson books, poetry
hooks story books-fos which the sicken
ed childs heart longed so sorely; the only
possible consolation where all human COM
fort was lost.
There was Il neat little iron bedstead
and the necessary furniture, all of the
nloinest barest, most uninteresting order.
as duly made and provided for a subject
race; but .uhen Betsy took the child up
ia ,be little room under the tiles and told
har that she could have it for her own,