The Project Gutenberg EBook of Belles and Ringers, by Hawley Smart

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Title: Belles and Ringers

Author: Hawley Smart

Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20529]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BELLES AND RINGERS ***

Produced by Al Haines

BELLES AND RINGERS

BY

HAWLEY SMART,

AUTHOR OF

"BOUND TO WIN;" "FALSE CARDS;" "TWO KISSES;" "COURTSHIP," ETC.

NEW EDITION.

LEVER BROTHERS, LTD.,

PORT SUNLIGHT, NEAR BIRKENHEAD.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

TODBOROUGH GRANGE

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSPIRATORS TRIUMPH

CHAPTER III.

THE COMMONSTONE BALL

CHAPTER IV.

THE ROCKCLIFFE GAMES

CHAPTER V.

AN EXCURSION TO TROTBURY

CHAPTER VI.

A SHORT CUT HOME

CHAPTER VII.

"THE PLAY'S THE THING!"

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. WRIOTHESLEY

CHAPTER IX.

SATURDAY AT HURLINGHAM

CHAPTER X.

MRS. WRIOTHESLEY'S LITTLE DINNER

CHAPTER XI.

THE RINGING OF THE BELLES

BELLES AND RINGERS.

CHAPTER I.

TODBOROUGH GRANGE.

Todborough Grange, the seat of Cedric Bloxam, Justice of the Peace, and
whilom High Sheriff for East Fernshire, lies low. The original Bloxam,
like the majority of our ancestors, had apparently a great dislike to
an exposed situation; and either a supreme contempt for the science of
sanitation, or a confused idea that water could be induced to run
uphill, and so, not bothering his head on the subject of drainage, as
indeed no one did in those days, he built his house in a hole, holding,
I presume, that the hills were as good to look up at as the valleys to
look down upon. It was an irregular pile of gabled red brick, of what
could be only described as the composite order, having been added to by
successive Bloxams at their own convenience, and without any regard to
architectural design. It was surrounded by thick shrubberies, in which
the laurels were broken by dense masses of rhododendrons. Beyond these
again were several plantations, and up the hill on the east side of the
house stretched a wood of some eighty acres or so in extent.

As a race, the Bloxams possessed some of the leading Anglo-Saxon