The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Carbonels, by Charlotte M. Yonge

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Title: The Carbonels

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge

Illustrator: W.S. Stacey

Release Date: April 27, 2007 [EBook #21223]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CARBONELS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Carbonels

By Charlotte M. Yonge
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THE CARBONELS

BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

CHAPTER ONE.

FRENCH MEASURE.

"For thy walls a pretty slight drollery."
_The Second Part of King Henry IV_.

"A bad lot. Yes, sir, a thoroughly bad lot."

"You don't mean it."

"Yes, ma'am, a bad lot is the Uphill people. Good for nothing and
ungrateful! I've known them these thirty-years, and no one will do
anything with them."

The time was the summer of 1822. The place was a garden, somewhat gone
to waste, with a gravel drive running round a great circle of
periwinkles with a spotted aucuba in the middle. There was a low,
two-storied house, with green shutters, green Venetian blinds, and a
rather shabby verandah painted in alternate stripes of light and darker
green. In front stood a high gig, with a tall old, bony horse trying to
munch the young untrimmed shoots of a lilac in front of him as he waited
for the speaker, a lawyer, dressed as country attorneys were wont to
dress in those days, in a coat of invisible green, where the green
constantly became more visible, brown trousers, and under them drab
gaiters. He was addressing a gentleman in a blue coat and nankeen
trousers, but evidently military, and two ladies in white dresses,
narrow as to the skirts, but full in the sleeves. One had a blue scarf
over her shoulders and blue ribbons in her very large Leghorn bonnet;
the other had the same in green, and likewise a green veil. Her bonnet
was rather more trimmed, the dress more embroidered, the scarf of a
richer, broader material than the other's, and it was thus evident that
she was the married sister; but they were a good deal alike, with the
same whol