The Executor Author:Alexander 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. Stasie had finished her note long before her friend ceased to write rapidly, and she still sat on, gazing at Ella without seeing her, while her th... more »oughts strayed away to the dim distant past of her childhood in her stepfather's Syrian home, the half-forgotten realities of which were largely supplemented by a lively imagination, influenced no doubt by as extensive reading as her means permitted, on Eastern subjects. She was impatient for the arrival of the other executor, from whose interference on her behalf she expected so much, albeit she did not very clearly know what she wanted. Her leading idea was to leave school, to travel in Italy or Germany, or to return to the only home she ever knew. Latterly she had troubled herself more than she used as to her own future, as to whether the property bequeathed her was mere competence or wealth ; on this point she had, on one or two of the rare occasions when she saw him, essayed to extract some distinct information from Mr. Harding, but in vain. A friendly pat on the shoulder, a laughing assurance "that she need not disturb herself," " that she would always have cheese to her bread," was all her acting guardian deigned to say, so she was obliged to fall back on conjecture. She had grown weary and indignant at the prolonged imprisonment to which she was subjected, now that she felt herself a woman, and fancied she was equal to guide her own steps. To be shut up with children and half-formed ignorant girls, by no means of the class that might be expected at an establishment of the pretensions affected by the Misses Boaden, was too bad! for Stasie Verner, in spite of her middle- class training, was by nature an aristocrat, so far as hatred of vulgarity and meanness went. While she sat musing with contracted brows, a...« less