The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Westcotes, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

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Title: The Westcotes

Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Release Date: December 30, 2003 [eBook #10548]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WESTCOTES***

E-text prepared by Guus van Baalen

Transcriber's Notes:

1. Words which may seem to be transcriber's typos, or otherwise
suspect, but which are reproduced faithfully (archaic spellings,
printer's typos--sometimes I couldn't tell):

Ch. I: befel, undigged
Ch. III: chaperon
Ch. IV: babby, mun, valtz
Ch. V: zounded, dimpsey, after'n, ax'n, ax
Ch. VI: picquet, damitol
Ch. XI: alwaies, Desarts, Eternitie

2. Diphthongs, given as single characters in the printed copy, are
transcribed as two separate characters.

THE WESTCOTES

by

ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH

DEDICATION

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,

A spinster, having borrowed a man's hat to decorate her front hall,
excused herself on the ground that the house 'wanted a something.'
By inscribing your name above this little story I please myself at
the risk of helping the reader to discover not only that it wants a
something, but precisely what that something is. It wants--to confess
and have done with it--all the penetrating subtleties of insight, all
the delicacies of interpretation, you would have brought to Dorothea's
aid, if for a moment I may suppose her worth your championing. So I
invoke your name to stand before my endeavour like a figure outside
the brackets in an algebraical sum, to make all the difference by
multiplying the meaning contained.

But your consent gives me another opportunity even more warmly desired.
And I think that you, too, will take less pleasure in discovering how
excellent your genius appears to one who nevertheless finds it a
mystery in operation, than in learning that he has not missed to
admire, at least, and with a sense almost of personal loyalty, the
sustained and sustaining pride in good workmanship by which you have
set a common example to all who practise, however divers