The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck A Comedy of Limitations

when golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "th

iladelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's recent appointment as consul-g

cing unsuspected funds of generosity-permitted his wife to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John Charteris, acting as Rudolph M

her this sop to the conventions

igured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race! proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man unheard and almost excuse

hazarded something concerning

h is just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is

, Po

tired of her by this. He will marry money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone

was born a Bellingham.

my Lichfield?" Mrs. As

*

ested her to be right

torious Scott Musgrave murder. Scott Musgrave-a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be quite accurate-had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and her two

the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable opportunity (conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they do say's") to accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing within ston

duly re?lected that sp

rical Association, and

en from the list of pat

merely altered to "Mr

*

led him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth about her husband a

course not to have incurred ostracism thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Mus