Read "The Gilded Chair" by Melville Davisson Post online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
One, arriving over the Caledonian railway at Doune, will at once notice how that station exceeds any other of this line in point of nice construction. The framework of the building is of steel; the roof, glass; the platform of broad cement blocks lying like clean gray bands along the car tracks. There is here no dirt, no smoke, no creaky floor boards, no obtrusive glaring bookstalls, and no approach given over to the soiling usages of trade. One goes out from the spotless shed into a gravel court, inclosed with a high brick wall, stone capped, planted along its southern exposure with pear trees, trained flat after the manner of the northern gardener.
The Marchesa Soderrelli, following the little street into the village, stopped in the public square at the shop of a tobacconist for a word of direction. This square is one of the old landmarks of Doune. In the center of it is a stone pillar, capped at the top with a quaint stone lion, the work of some ancient cutter, to whom a lion was a fairy beast, sitting like a Skye dog on his haunches with his long tail jauntily in the air, and his wizened face cocked impudently.