Chapter 24
"I shall never forget!" she cried. "My life will henceforth be one continual remembrance of you, one long act of devotion to your memory, one oblation, one unceasing penitence, one agony of waiting!"
He lifted her face, and saw that it was true.
"Well," said he, gracefully wrapping his cloak about him, "well, now I shall have a little peace."
He kissed her, with a certain jaunty grace, upon her hair, and prepared to dissolve, while he lightly tapped a tattoo upon his leg with the dove-colored gloves he carried.
"Good-by, my dear!" he said; "henceforth I shall sleep o' nights; my heart is quite at rest."
"But mine is breaking," she wailed, madly trying once more to clasp his vanishing form.
He threw her a kiss from his misty finger-tips, and all that remained with her, besides her broken heart, was a faint disturbance of the air.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 25--Possible typo, but left it as the original. "...and contented himself, as a rule, with creeping about the passages in =list= slippers,..."
Page 25--arquebuse--printer typo corrected to arquebus.
Page 231--setting--printer typo corrected to sitting.
Page 255--missing word "have" inserted to: "But now I'll none of you, for you've played with me."
Page 304--Potential typo. "...walkin' round an' round the graveyard =lie= a six days' race fer the belt at Madison Square."
Page 325--inpatient--typo corrected to impatient. Although inpatient is a valid word, it is incorrectly used in this instance.
Page 345--is--printer typo corrected to in.
Page 408--Possible typo, but left it as in the original. "...then the =affection= spread to her knees and gradually extended upward."
Several instances of variant spelling of reci-pe and recipe. Left as in the original.
From A Southern Porch
By
Dorothy Scarborough
_A Book of Whimsy_
The author does not preach the lost art of loafing. No! Nothing so direct as preaching. She merely loafs,--consistently, restfully, delightfully, but with an almost fatal hypnotic persuasiveness. She is a sort of stationary Pied Piper, luring the unwary reader to her sun-flecked porch, to watch with her the queer procession of created things go by,--from lovers and ghosts to lizards and toads.
Under the spell, convinced that loafing is better than doing, the reader stays and chuckles over the quiet humor and quaint fancies. He gets away finally,--all delightful experiences must end in this work-a-day world,--still chuckling, but with a renewed sense of life and life's values.
* * * * *
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
The Kiltartan Poetry Book
_Prose Translations from the Irish_
By
Lady Gregory
Author of "Irish Folk-History Plays," "Seven Short Plays," "Our Irish Theatre," etc.
Certainly no single individual has done more than Lady Gregory to revive the Irish Literature, and to bring again to light the brave old legends, the old heroic poems. From her childhood, the author has studied this ancient language, and has collected most of her material from close association with the peasants who have inherited these poems and tales.
* * * * *
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
End of Project Gutenberg's Humorous Ghost Stories, by Dorothy Scarborough