Explore "Introduction to Sally" by Elizabeth Von Arnim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
While they, along the roads, were drawing every minute nearer, the unconscious Duke was sitting in his plain study, having his plain tea, which had been set beside him by his plain parlourmaid. This is not to say that the parlourmaid was ill-favoured, but only that she wasn't a footman.
There were no footmen at Crippenham. There was hardly anything there, except the Duke. For years it had been his conviction that this annual fortnight of the rest that is obtained by complete contrast prolonged his life. Something evidently prolonged it, and the Duke was sure it was Crippenham. There he went every Easter alone with Laura, because it was a small house, and an ugly house, and a solitary house, and had nothing to recommend it except that it was the exact opposite of every other Moulsford possession.