Rutherford, Mark, 1831-1913 / 2008-06-10 00:00:00
EBOOK, CATHERINE FURZE ***
Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
CATHERINE FURZE
CHAPTER I
It was a bright, hot, August Saturday in the market town of
Eastthorpe, in the eastern Midlands, in the year 1840. Eastthorpe
lay about five miles on the western side of the Fens, in a very
level country on the banks of a river, broad and deep, but with only
just sufficient fall to enable its long-lingering waters to reach
the sea. It was an ancient market town, with a six-arched stone
bridge, and with a High Street from which three or four smaller and
narrower streets connected by courts and alleys diverged at right
angles. In the middle of the town was the church, an immense
building, big enough to hold half Eastthorpe, and celebrated for its
beautiful spire and its peal of eight bells. Round the church lay
the churchyard, fringed with huge elms, and in the Abbey Close, as
it was called, which was the outer girdle of the churchyard on three
sides, the fourth side of the square being the High Street, there
lived in 1840 the principal doctor, the lawyer, the parson, and two
aged gentlewomen with some property, who were daughters of one of
the former partners in the bank, had been born in Eastthorpe, and
had scarcely ever quitted it. Here also were a young ladies'
seminary and an ancient grammar school for the education of forty
boys, sons of freemen of the town.
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