The Brown Study Read online

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  The Brown Study

  By GRACE S. RICHMOND

  Author of "Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper," "The Twenty-Fourth ofJune," "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 wait patiently outside the doorof Brown's small bachelor abode. This door opened directly from thestreet into the Brown Study.

  The really curious thing about the study was that nobody in that quarterof the big city knew it was a study. They called the place simply"_Brown's_." Who Brown himself was they did not know, either. He hadcome to live in the little old house about a year ago. He was dressed soplainly, and everything about him, including his manner, was of such anunobtrusive simplicity, that he attracted little attention--at first.Soon his immediate neighbours were on terms of interestedacquaintanceship with him, though how they got there they could notthemselves have told--it had never occurred to them to wonder. The thinghad come about naturally, somehow. Presently others besides his immediateneighbours knew Brown, had become friends of Brown. They never wonderedhow it had happened.

  The Brown Study had many callers. It was by now thoroughly used to them,for it had all sorts, every day of the month, at any hour of the day, atalmost any hour of the night.