Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/173

Rh “Oh, I have read the novel, too; I read it after we visited the North End last winter, with Miss South.”

“Before we go home to-day, perhaps we can go up to the place where the Fountain Inn used to stand. It’s some little distance up the hill. There’s a kind of interesting looking pump over a well there, and they suppose that the inn was named from it.”

“From the pump?”

“No, from the well,” replied Amy, without a shade of annoyance at Brenda’s interruption.

“Well, I wish that instead of building his great mansion house at Hopkinton, Sir Harry had built it at  Marblehead. If he had done that, it would probably still be standing, as in Marblehead the people apparently never pull down a stick or a stone.”

“You ’ll have to be contented with the well, and imagine that the little old house across the road is the  inn where Agnes was scrubbing the steps when Sir  Harry first saw her.”

“I wonder if she ever came back here, after she became a titled lady.”

“I ’ve never heard about that, but I know that my mother read me the story from the town history once, and it says there that Agnes was very good to her own  family, and never neglected the interests of her brothers  and sisters.”

“I must read the novel myself; the story is certainly a very romantic one. Are n’t there some more interesting Marblehead women or girls to tell us about?”