Chapters from Childhood Book

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 II In My Grandfather's House I MY grandfather lived in the house next door but one to us. He was the celebrated painter, F. M. B. He was one of the kindest, gentlest, handsomest old gentlemen that ever lived. Everybody loved him. He wore a blue cloth tam-o'- shanter when he was at work, and in the winter sat with his legs in a big bag made of fur inside, like those worn at the North Pole. His cheeks were pink, and he had blue eyes, and his hair fell straight down on both sides of his face nearly to the bottom of his ears, and my grandmother cut it straight and even all the way round behind. It was wonderfully thick and pure snow white, and so was his beard. He wasn't very tall, but his shoulders were broad, and he looked somehow grand and important. He nearly always smiled when you looked at him, not an empty smile, but a kind, understanding one, though his eyes looked quite sad all the while. His lips jutted out Ford Madox-Brown. Ford Madox-Brown After a drawing by his daughter, Mrs. Catherine Hueffer when he was thoughtful, something like Aunt Lucy's, and then they looked terribly stern. He usually wore a shiny top-hat and a black cape, and he used to take my grandmother's little dog out for a walk on Primrose Hill. He couldn't walk very fast, because he had the gout, but the little dog was very old and couldn't go fast either, so it didn't mind. He would stop from time to time and look behind to see if it was coming, and then it used to stop too, and sit down and look up at him and hang its tongue out and wag its tail, and they went on again. Sometimes he smiled a different sort of smile?his whole face looked as if it were laughing and his eyes as well. But that was very rarely. Once, when he was having breakfast with a good many people one of his...Read More