The
Dull Miss Archinard
By
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1898
Copyright, 1898, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
—
All rights reserved
TO
MY GRANDMOTHER
H. M. D.
Prologue
CHAPTER I., II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.
Part I.
CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V.
Part II.
CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV.
Prologue
PETER ODD
The Dull Miss Archinard
CHAPTER I.
PETER ODD was fishing. He stood knee-deep in a placid bend of stream,whipping the water deftly, his eyes peacefully intent on the floatingfly, his mind in the musing, impersonal mood of fisherman reverie, nodefinite thought forming from the appreciative impressions of sunlitmeadows, cool stretches of shade beneath old trees, gleaming curves ofriver. For a tired man, fishing is an occupation particularly soothing,and Peter Odd was tired, tired and sad. His pleasure was now, perhaps,more that of the lover of nature than of the true sportsman, thepastoral feast of the landscape with its blue distance of wooded hill,more to him than the expected flashing leap of a scarlet-spotted beauty;yet the attitude of receptive intentness was pleasant in all its phases,no one weary thought could become dominant while the eyes rested on thewater, or were raised to such loveliness of quiet English country. Somuch of what he saw his