LIPPINCOTT'S
MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
JANUARY, 1890.
MILLICENT AND ROSALIND.
CHAPTER I.
ON a certain afternoon in May, some years ago, a middle-aged gentleman presented himself at the window of the Lost-Property Office, in the Waterloo railway-station of London.
He was a queer-looking personage. In stature he was barely of middle height, even in the tall hat from which the rubs of life had removed the gloss and blackness. His shoes were too large for him, and had very heavy soles; the creases in the sleeves of his coat and behind the knees of his trousers had become set in their ways. The gentleman’s shoulders stooped a little, his frame seemed emaciated, and his gait had no buoyancy.
But his head was remarkable. It was large, and, for a man of middle height, surprisingly large. It was long rather than broad: the space of the intellectual faculties was vast, and beautifully developed; the brow was prominent, and bushy eyebrows overhung deep-set eyes. His cheeks were thin and deeply furrowed, and a thin beard did not conceal the sad expression of the mouth. His nose was relatively small, and very delicately moulded, with thin, sensitive nostrils. His voice, when he spoke to the clerk, was mellow and courteous, with a slight Scotch burr in it: he rested his hand and shoulder against the frame of the window.
“There was an umbrella,—a new large cotton umbrella,—I left it in a third-class compartment of the 3.30 train.”
“’Tain’t often we gets umbrellas here,” answered the clerk, looking amused. “Folks as finds’em mostly nets ’em: especially new large cotton ones like yourn. My advice 1s, you’d best apply to the parties as was in the compartment with you.”
The gentleman’s nostrils expanded at this rather impertinent speech, and there was a glow in his eyes as he fixed them on the clerk.
