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The early life and adventures of Sylvia Scarlett--Another issue
The early life and adventures of Sylvia ScarlettAnother issue Author:Compton Mackenzie 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: CHAPTER II THE amount of brandy that Henry Snow had drunk to support what he called his misfortune made him loquacious for the first part of the journey. Whil... more »e he and Sylvia waited during the night at a railway junction, he held forth at length not merely upon the event that was driving him out of France, but generally upon the whole course of his life. Sylvia was glad that her father treated her as if she were grown up, because having conceived for him a kind of maternal solicitude, not so much from pity or affection as from the inspiration to quit Lille forever which she gratefully owed to his lapse, she had no intention of letting him re-establish any authority over herself. His life's history, poured forth while they paced the dark platform or huddled before the stove in the dim waiting- room, confirmed her resolve. "Of course, when I first got that job in Lille it seemed just what I was looking for. I'd had a very scrappy education, because my father, who was cashier in a bank, died, and my mother, who you're a bit like—I used to have a photograph of her, but I suppose it's lost, like everything else—my mother got run over and killed coming back from the funeral. There's something funny about that, you know. I remember your mother laughed very much when I told her about it once. But I didn't laugh at the time, I can tell you, because it meant two aunts playing battledore and shuttlecock. Don't interrupt, there's a good girl. It's a sort of game. I can't remember what it is in French. I dare say it doesn't exist in France. You'll have to stick to English now. Good old England, it's not a bad place. Well, these two aunts of mine grudged every penny they spent on me, but one of them got married to a man who knew the firm I worked for in Lille. That's how I came to France. ...« less