The Project Gutenberg EBook of The First Violin, by Jessie Fothergill

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Title: The First Violin
A Novel

Author: Jessie Fothergill

Release Date: June 25, 2009 [EBook #29219]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE FIRST VIOLIN

_A NOVEL._

BY JESSIE FOTHERGILL,

_Author of "A March in the Ranks," Etc._

* * * * *

NEW YORK
THE FEDERAL BOOK COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

THE FIRST VIOLIN.

CHAPTER I.

MISS HALLAM.

"Wonderful weather for April!" Yes, it certainty was wonderful. I fully
agreed with the sentiment expressed at different periods of the day by
different members of my family; but I did not follow their example and
seek enjoyment out-of-doors--pleasure in that balmy spring air.
Trouble--the first trouble of my life--had laid her hand heavily upon
me. The world felt disjointed and all upside-down; I very helpless and
lonely in it. I had two sisters, I had a father and a mother; but none
the less was I unable to share my grief with any one of them; nay, it
had been an absolute relief to me when first one and then another of
them had left the house, on business or pleasure intent, and I, after
watching my father go down the garden-walk, and seeing the gate close
after him, knew that, save for Jane, our domestic, who was caroling
lustily to herself in the kitchen regions, I was alone in the house.

I was in the drawing-room. Once secure of solitude, I put down the
sewing with which I had been pretending to employ myself, and went to
the window--a pleasant, sunny bay. In that window stood a small
work-table, with a flower-pot upon it containing a lilac primula. I
remember it distinctly to this day, and I am likely to carry the
recollection with me so long as I live. I leaned my elbows upon this
table, and gazed across the fields, green with spring grass, tenderly
lighted by an April sun, to where the river--the Skern--shone with a
pleasant, homely, silvery glitter, twining through the smi