A Mother's Holiday Author:John Strange Winter General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1899 Original Publisher: Ward, Lock and co., limited Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com w... more »here you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: A Broken Past CHAPTER I Two ini men were standing in the wings of a country theatre, talking. It was that kind of theatre where the management was loose and where visitors, of various descriptions, were freely permitted to wander behind the scenes at their own sweet will. In Muddlehampton it was, among the gilded youth, considered rather a swagger sort of thing to be on such terms at the theatre as would admit you on the other side of the curtain. It was an excitement which, to the gilded youth of that ancient historic town, meant "seeing life." And so it was seeing life, a very hard and laborious one; onestrongly in contrast with the fixed and easy circumstances of most of the local patrons of the theatre. Both the men were in evening dress. One of them a mere boy, handsome, and with a fine air of being used to everything; the other a man of nearly forty years old, strong, keen, alert and thoroughly alive -- a man with the form of an athlete and the glances of a hawk. The one a boy whom you would not trust, because he knew so little ; the other a man whom you equally would not trust, for the reason that he evidently knew so much. " Lovely woman," said the boy, standing with his hands in his pockets, and regarding a young lady on the stage, who was enacting the brilliant part of Frou- Frou. " Lovely woman, ain't she ? " His companion, who was resting one shoulder against a rather rickety bit of scenery, looked at her carelessly. " Yes, she's a pretty girl," he replied carelessly. " Where does she live ? Do you know ? " " No, I don't know," the ...« less