Project Gutenberg EBook of Sample Work, by Anonymous

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CHAPTER I.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Ellison returned from the quay,
and the whole street was bright with the pale light that follows rain.
He paused at the baker's door, bought a loaf, and asked whether the
mail-coach had come through the lower road.

"Not yet, sir," said the boy. "They say the bridge was crowded, and one
wheel broke near the toll-house." Mr. Ellison thanked him and walked on.
At the corner he met Dr. Price, who lifted his hat and remarked that the
air would turn colder before nightfall.

Mrs. Ellison was in the parlour, sorting papers tied with narrow ribbon.
She had marked each packet in a small upright hand: rents, invoices,
repairs, and correspondence. "You are later than usual," she said,
without looking up. "Were you detained at the office?"

"By accounts," he replied. "And by Mr. Clarke, who talks as if time were
free to him and borrowed from everyone else." She smiled at that, then
handed him a letter bearing a foreign stamp. The seal was cracked,
though not by them; the post had done its work roughly.

CHAPTER II.

By seven o'clock the lamps were lit, and the wind had begun to move
steadily from the north-east. In the square a bookseller cried out the
evening notices, while two apprentices argued over a crate marked
"Fragile" in large black letters. No one believed the warning.

At half past seven, according to the station clock, Miss Avery arrived
with a map tube under her arm and three notebooks in a satchel. She was
followed by the curate, who carried nothing but a folded umbrella and a
very determined expression. The meeting began at once.

"First, the river wall," said Mr. Ellison. "Second, the ferry schedule.
Third, the school roof." He tapped each item with a pencil as he spoke.
When the curate tried to begin with an objection, Mrs. Ellison raised a
hand and said, "Not yet. Let us finish the list first."

There was, of course, an objection anyway. There always was. It concerned
money, then weather, then the contractor's cousin, and finally whether
the old estimate from Jan. was still valid in Oct. Dr. Price observed
that numbers age faster than people admit.

CHAPTER III.

Near midnight, after the papers were stacked and the fire had burned low,
Mr. Ellison wrote a short note to his brother abroad:

"We are well. The town remains itself. Repairs proceed slowly, as repairs
must. Send word when you can."

He sanded the page, folded it, and addressed it carefully. Outside, a
cart passed over the stones, then another, then silence. From the church
tower came the bell for twelve, measured and unhurried.

When at last he closed the shutters, he could still hear the river,
though the house stood two streets away. It sounded steady, as if nothing
in the day's small confusions had touched it at all.

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