Beatrice Melton's Discipline

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 III. BELLA GORDON. Bella Gordon has gone. She left for her friends in Adelaide yesterday. How much I shall miss her during the two or three months of her absence. I can scarcely think of it; her strong, bright, cheerful nature is such a support. Not a week has passed without our meeting. I believe...
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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 III. BELLA GORDON. Bella Gordon has gone. She left for her friends in Adelaide yesterday. How much I shall miss her during the two or three months of her absence. I can scarcely think of it; her strong, bright, cheerful nature is such a support. Not a week has passed without our meeting. I believe her little pony thoroughly knows our slip pannel, and stops of his own accord. I promised to go and see her before she left, and I kept my promise, though it is months now since I have been in the neighbourhood. To go to Bella I have to pass our old home, and but for love of her I feel I could not have done it. Butit is over now; I have been, and I am better for it. I suppose the feeling I am encouraging is morbid, as Kenneth Gordon scruples not to tell me?a most unhealthy state of feeling. Yes, these were his very words, and perhaps he is right. At any rate, I did not feel half that I thought and dreaded I should have done, as I slowly walked past the rose-hedge that separated the dear old garden from the road, and caught sight of the white chimneys through the trees, from which no smoke was curling. The house is without a tenant yet; for the minister, Mr. Smith, who supplies our old church, lives in a distant township, and rides every Sunday to his work. There was a sad and forlorn look about the little closed gate, and the garden-path littered with leaves, and the curtainless windows; but I was alone, and bore it better so. Perhaps, too, the fact that our new residence is wearing a more home-like appearance?that all but one of our dear ones are every night gathered beneath its roof?had much to do in subduing the pain, the agony I had anticipated. Bella must have been watching for me. She was standing at the old slip pannel, as I turned into the road, and came r...