The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy 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: you shall learn what it is to have served Sir Matthew Dowling's most honoured friend." Having said this, he began leading his fair companion back towards the house as rapidly as might be consistent with the delicate style in which she was shod. " Please ma'am, may I go and tell Teddy ?" said little Michael, walking after them. " Teddy ? who is Teddy, my little man ?" inquired Lady Clarissa, graciously smiling upon him ; for her ladyship, at no time an ill-natured woman, was at this moment in the best of all possible humours with herself and everybody else. There had been various passages in what had passed between herself and Sir Matthew, during this most delightful walk, which convinced her that the knight, notwithstanding the homage he paid to her rank, could not wholly resist the fascinations of her person, talents, and manners; and the conviction pleased her. But let not the character of this noble lady be for a moment misunderstood. Lucretia herself would hardly have shrunk with greater horror from an improper attachment. All she dreamed of in her intimacy with Sir Matthew Dowling, with the young poet, Osmund Norval, and with a few other gentlemen whom she was in the habit of meeting, was but that their admiring friendship should be animated by a lambent, innoxious flickering of the flame, which, after a peculiar theory of her own, she believed to pervade the universe, cheering the well- conducted by its mild platonic warmth, but scorching, burning, and destroying those who permitted it to exercise over them a too-sovereign sway and masterdom. That she had reached the age of forty, unsolicited in marriage by any suiter of any degree, she attributed, rightly enough, perhaps, to the unfortunate disproportion between her fortune and her rank ; but must she, therefore, l...Read More