Edward frederic benson biography of michael

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Of course it does.

And if you love a thing, you have certainly a better chance of succeeding in it than in something that you don’t love at all. . Did he look tired, or was it only the light above his head that made him appear so haggard?

“That is all I can tell you,” he said at length.

“If you refer to it as rubbish, sir, there is the end of the matter.”

“Ah!

Everything was plain, but equally obviously everything was expensive, and the general impression given was that the owner had no desire to be surrounded by things he did not want, but insisted on the superlative quality of the things he did. The heavens of international politics were as serene as the evening sky; not yet was the storm-cloud that hung over Ireland bigger than a man’s hand; east, west, north and south there brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon day, and the amazing doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight incentive to the perusal of the morning paper.

But it was abundantly clear at this moment that this apparently easy operation was out of his reach. Ah, and this is the sentimental hour, just when the sun begins to touch the horizon line of the stale, weary old earth and turns it into rosy gold and heals its troubles and its weariness. “That’s just what I am wanting to tell you.”

Francis laughed.

He knew all that so well, so terribly well. After that I shall come back and settle down in town and study.”

“Play the piano?” asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his cousin’s schemes. If I showed it I did not mean to.”

Michael pondered over this. It’s part of the family plan, and the Medes and Persians aren’t in it when the family plan is in question.

Lady Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical whisper: “His lordship has arrived, my lady.” Those of the household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) clustered in the choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline.

“He thinks I can make my mind like his if I choose; and if I don’t choose, or rather can’t choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be sufficient to make me act as if it was. Aunt Barbara will be there.”

Francis consulted a small, green morocco pocket-book. But not less epoch-making had been the dawn of friendship. But Francis’s visit had already distracted him, and he found now that Francis’s departure took him even farther away from his designed evening.

Have many of your officers been resigning?”

“I am studying music, Your Majesty,” said Michael. Twice his servant came in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but Michael had no heed for anything but the sounds which his flying fingers suggested to him.

At the end Falbe gave a long sigh. Now Francis—”

“I am afraid Michael has always been a little jealous of Francis,” remarked his father.