The Mountain Girl by Emma Payne Erskine Chapter 25 Page 9

the town house, whither his uncle had sent for her, when, stricken with grief, he had lain down for his last brief illness. The old servants had all been retained, and David was ushered to his mother’s own sitting-room by the same household dignitary who was wont to preside there when, as a lad, he had been allowed rare visits to his cousins in the city.

How well he remembered his fine, punctilious old uncle, and the feeling of awe tempered by anticipation with which he used to enter those halls. He was overwhelmed with a sense of loss and disaster as he glanced up the great stairway where his cousins were wont to come bounding down to him, handsome, hearty, romping lads.

It had been a man’s household, for his aunt had been dead many years — a man’s household characterized by a man’s