Explore "The Brown Study" by Grece S. Richmond on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
And now, promptly on the stroke of two, the dinner guests arrived, not a man or woman of them later than five minutes after. Even Mrs. Kelcey, though she had rushed into the kitchen two minutes earlier by the back door, now entered formally with Patrick, her husband, by the front, and only the high flush on her cheek and the sparkle in her blue-black eye told of a sense of her responsibilities.
The company had put on its best for the occasion, there could be no possible question of that. From the pink geranium in Mrs. Kelcey's hair just behind her ear, to the high polish of her husband's boots, the Kelceys were brave and fine. Mrs. Murdison, though soberly gowned in slate-coloured worsted, wore a white muslin kerchief which gave her the air of a plump and comfortable Mother Superior. Mr. Murdison, the only gentleman present who possessed a "suit of blacks," as he himself was accustomed to call it, came in looking like the Scottish preacher whose grandson he was, and lent much dignity to the occasion merely by his presence.