Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1908-12-10


dance is fated to draw many a tear from
the proud grey eyes. Granville Rose, ere
thirty minutes are over, will be tortured
in way which he is powerless to resist.
The sire of the dark featured young
man who had expressed such admiration
for Maude Denison had begun life as a
solicitors clerk, from which in due course
of time he bossomed forth into an attor-
ney, and sat himself down in the little
town Of Bury st. Edmunds, with a view
to the persecution of mankind or the re-
dressing of his fellow mems grievances,
as circumstances and the presentation of
six and eightpence might direct. Bury
st. Edmunds lies no great distance from
the famous Heath of Newmarket. In de-
fault of other business, Mr.. Pearman
took to attending the race meetings there
at gradually he became acquainted with
many of those multifarious hangers-on
that exist so mystically by racing. He
had naturally an acute understanding
and he now got many hint as to where
to lay out little money profitably. The
trafickers in horsefesh and followers of
the turf have their subjects of litigatio
as well as those who pursue other avoca-
tons. Who was so handy to employ as
Pearman? and, by degrees he began to
make a name as a solicitor in horse cases
at the racing metropolis and became rich.
In due course Harold Denison, Maude's
father, had passed through his hands.
Denison had started in life with a fine
property; but burning the candle, not only
at both ends. but a little in the middle
besides, he had soon done away with that
Pearman was everything he should be on
the occasion but when his client emerged
from his sea of troubles, two-thirds of the
Glinn estate were in the hands of the
solicitor. Still. everyone said Denison's
had been a very bad breakup; that the
property had been sold at a fair valua-
ton; and that, but for Pearman. Harold
Denison would not have been able to keen
Glinn and such acres as were still left
to him. BY this time Pearman was an
owner of race horses, and kept stud
of his own. He had married lady in
some way connected with usury. and. hay-
ing altogether acquired a considerable
fortune, made the first mistake in his
career, and set up for a country gentle
man.
He built big house on the estate so
recently Topped off the Glinn property he
built large stables. He named his house
Mannersley, after the manor it stood up
on. He established a crest and coat-of-
arms he had his cards engraced. Mr..
and Mrs. Pearman, Mannersley :" he sat
himself down to wait-but nobody called.
Money will do and does do a good deal
but here and there blood respects its
welcome what they designated as "a
money-grabbing attorney who was fatten-
ing on the necessities of Harold Deni-
son of Glinn.' The Master of the
Hounds, it was true, called upon him ::
but even Pearman could regard that in
no other light but that of a business
transaction. He asked and obtained leave
20 draw the covers, gave the solicitor a
capital luncheon on his return visit, but
had steadily refused all invitations to
dinner
In due course of time Mrs. Pearman
died. She left but one son, who at the
period of her death was an undergradu-
ate at Cambridge, but who, now many
years older, is the gentleman who danced
that quadrille with handsome Maude Deni-
son.
Young Pearman has succeeded far bet
ter than his progenitor in making his
way in the county. Still, although he
had insnuated himself to a certain ex-
tent into society, there were many of the
county families who utterly ignored the
solicitors son. The men of the family
might know him in the hunting field; the
younger sons might even go so far as to
drop in at Mannersley for lunch, when
the hounds or aught else took them that
way. But the women tabooed him-they
would none of him; and bitterly did Sam
Pearman feel that naughty Ostracism. All
men have their ambitions; Pearman had
his fathers intensified, to be acknowledge
ed as within the pale of 1.-The upper ten. "
He quite understood that the recognition
of the race course and hunting field was
far from cODStitutino Such