[Herb of Grace by Rosa Nouchette Carey]@TWC D-Link book
Herb of Grace

CHAPTER I
7/13

Then you had better get the child home." He nodded and smiled at Kit as he moved away.
Caleb gazed after him with open mouth and pale eyes full of speechless gratitude; but Kit had unfurled the umbrella proudly, and sat like a queen in a silken tent.
"Ain't he a gentleman!" she exclaimed with a joyous chuckle; "seems to me the angels must be his sort.

Wasn't he just splendid, dad!" But Caleb, who was trundling the perambulator down a side street, only shook his head in silence.
Malcolm felt a warm glow of exhilaration, which secretly moved him to astonishment, as he ran lightly up the long bare flights of stairs to his chambers.

"A mere trifle like that," he said to himself contemptuously, as he entered the outer room, where a small and exceedingly sharp office boy, rejoicing in the euphonious name of Malachi Murphy, beguiled the tedium of the waiting hours by cutting the initials of his family on the legs of the table.
When Malcolm wanted to amuse a friendly visitor, he would question Malachi blandly and innocently on his brothers' and sisters' names.
"You are all minor prophets," he would say carelessly.

"I think Mr.
So-and-So would be interested to hear how you came by these names." And thus encouraged, Malachi would twist his face knowingly, until it resembled a gargoyle rather than a human face, and start away as though he had been wound up afresh.
"Well, it was like this, sir.

Father was just reading Hosea on Sunday evening, when mother took bad, and so they made up their minds that they would call my eldest brother Hosea; the next one was Joel, because father liked the name; and by-and-by mother put in her word for Amos.
Obadiah only lived five weeks; and the next was a girl, and they called her Micah.


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