Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/58

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

The beauty of Spoils is that it is such good reading! Arnold's eye happened to fall upon it, and he said he had often wondered whether its author might not be the Lilian Lamb he had known as a child, years ago when he was visiting in Connecticut.

"I was staying with one of my classmates," he said, "whose father's country place adjoined that of Mr. Louis Ellerton, a man who owned good horses. This Lilian Lamb was a niece of the Ellertons, a small child in a long-sleeved gingham apron, who was forever riding horseback on the branches of an old apple tree behind the house. One day her aged steed gave way, and down she tumbled with a broken arm. The village doctor was non est cumatibus, and I was called in to set the arm. I was a green hand and hadn't got my surgical nerves in training. I thought the child would scream, and I was scared blue. It was a hateful fracture and it must have hurt atrociously. But the little thing bore it