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The Brown Study
By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of "Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper," "The Twenty-Fourth of
June," "The Second Violin," Etc.
1919
TO THE LIVING MEMORY OF EDWARDS PARK CLEAVELAND
CONTENTS
I. BROWN HIMSELF
II. BROWN'S CALLER—ONE OF MANY
III. BROWN'S BORROWED BABY
IV. BROWN'S SISTER SUE
V. BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY
VI. BROWN'S PERSISTENT MEMORY
VII. BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES
VIII. BROWN'S BIDDEN GUESTS
IX. BROWN'S UNBIDDEN GUESTS
X. BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
XI. BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD
XII. BROWN'S OLD WORLD
XIII. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FLOOD
XIV. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FIRE
XV. BROWN'S BROWN STUDY
XVI. BROWN'S NEW WORLD
THE TIME OF HIS LIFE
I
BROWN HIMSELF
Brown was so tall and thin, and his study was so low and square, that theone in the other seemed a misfit.
There was not much in the study. A few shelves of books—not all learnedbooks by any means—three chairs, one of them a rocker cushioned in acheerful red; a battered old desk; a broad and rather comfortable lookingcouch: this was nearly all the study's furniture. There was a fireplacewith a crumbling old hearth-stone, and usually a roaring fire within; anda chimney-piece above, where stood a few photographs and some odd-lookingarticles of apparently small value. On the walls were two smallportraits—of an elderly man and woman.
This was absolutely all there was in the room worth mentioning—exceptwhen Brown was in it. Then, of course, there was Brown. This is not atruism, it is a large, significant fact. When you had once seen Brown inhis study you knew that the room would be empty when he was out of it, nomatter who remained. Not that Brown was such a big, broad-shouldered,dominating figure of a man. He was so tall and thin of figure that helooked almost gaunt, and so spare and dark of face that he appearedalmost austere. Yet when you observed him closely he did not seem reallyaustere, for out of his eyes, of a clear, deep gray, looked not onlypower but sympathy, and not only patience but humour. His mouth wasclean-cut and strong, and it could smile in a rather wonderful way. As tothe years he had spent—they might have been thirty, or forty, or twenty,according to the hour in which one met him. As a matter of fact he was,at the beginning of this history, not very far along in the thirties,though when that rather wonderful smile of his was not in evidence onemight have taken him for somewhat older.
I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there wasusually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough, shaggycoat and the suggestion of collie blood about him—though he was plainlya mixture of several breeds—Bim belonged to Brown, and to Brown'simmediate environment, whenever Bim himself was able to accomplish it.When he was not able he was accustomed to