A Struggle for a Ring — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“oo FP - ie hardlyfelieve such people have @y a rn YOUNG WOMEN NOT ADMITTED. hanging over him, and it was this: He had but one sister, a light-hearted, laughing girl, of whom he was very fond, and she—this was his trouble—eloped, when she was seventeen years of age, with*her dancing-master. The doctor never told this, the trouble of his life, but to one person, his dearest friend, and then his words were strong. ‘‘l wash my hands of her forever,” he said. ‘‘A dancing-master! I give you my sacred word of honor that if she had married a private soldier I should have respected her twice as much, But a dancing-master! I ls.” His indignation was intense; he never pardoned her; it ' was, in his.eyes, a most terrible mesalhance. ‘A fiddle and a tombstone,” he said, over and over again, ‘‘could not be more opposite than a lady, a cler- gyman’s sister, and_a dancing-master.” Doctor Wallis did, after a worldly fashion, the wisest thing that he could do—he left the town where he was known, and began life afresh at Ladywell. There he made for himself fame and a reputation, and this one terrible drawback was never known. Some twelve years after his sister’s marriage she wrote to him. | ‘‘For God's sake, Richard,” she said, ‘‘forget your pride and. remember whose minister you are. Do not preach mercy and leave your only sister to starve. My husband has been ill for three months; I have no food for myself or my children. You will not like to read in a daily paper that I had been found, with my babe in my arms, starved to death. That will happen unless you come to my rescue.” That same day the doctor announced to his pupils that he was compelled to leave Ladywell for a day or two; in 4 Ae - < * —_ X cS (E(o) Eomicboo