'It is very grand,' she said to Ann Eliza; and Billy, who was leaning
toward her, replied:
'Yes, too grand for a Pe-Peterkin. It wants you, there, Jerrie, as its
m-m-master-p-p-piece, and, by Jove, you can b-be there, too, if you
will!'
No one heard this attempt at an offer but Jerrie, who, with a saucy toss
of the head, replied, laughingly:
'Thank you, Billy. I'll think of it, and let you know when I make up my
mind to come. Just now I prefer the cottage in the lane to any spot on
earth. Oh, here, we are at the station,' she cried, as the train shot
round a curve and Shannondale was reached.
There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps. Fred Raymond
gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over
Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone if
Jerrie had not helped her.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN SHANNONDALE.
Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which
stretched from the common down to the river where, when our story
opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly
covered with houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof
to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow
lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the
large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged,
as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four
hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and
miles, and nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the
morning at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill.
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