Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/165

 to the door. "I've got a patient in the office and another one coming." He led her into the front room and placed a chair near the window. "Here's a magazine," he said; "I shan't be long." But Charlotte didn't care about reading. As soon as Neil had gone, she looked around the room as though it interested her more than any fiction could have done. It was a large room with medallion wall paper, and the furniture belonged to that period in which Doctor Baldwin had spent his young manhood—when the ladies billowed in crinolines, and the gentlemen supported silk hats, and the little girls wore those plaited pantalettes and rolled their hoops with such decorum.

Telling herself that she wished to look at the pictures, she started on a breathless little tour of investigation.

"What a state everything's in!" she thought. "I don't believe the furniture has been rubbed for years." She patted