The Brown Study

Grace S. Richmond
The Brown Study

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Title: The Brown Study
Author: Grace S. Richmond
Release Date: April 5, 2004 [EBook #11912]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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The Brown Study
By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of "Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper," "The
Twenty-Fourth of June," "The Second Violin," Etc.
1919
TO THE LIVING MEMORY OF EDWARDS PARK CLEAVELAND

CONTENTS
I. BROWN HIMSELF
II. BROWN'S CALLER--ONE OF MANY

III. BROWN'S BORROWED BABY
IV. BROWN'S SISTER SUE
V. BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY
VI. BROWN'S PERSISTENT MEMORY
VII. BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES
VIII. BROWN'S BIDDEN GUESTS
IX. BROWN'S UNBIDDEN GUESTS
X. BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
XI. BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD
XII. BROWN'S OLD WORLD
XIII. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FLOOD
XIV. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FIRE
XV. BROWN'S BROWN STUDY
XVI. BROWN'S NEW WORLD
THE TIME OF HIS LIFE

I
BROWN HIMSELF
Brown was so tall and thin, and his study was so low and square, that
the one in the other seemed a misfit.
There was not much in the study. A few shelves of books--not all
learned books by any means--three chairs, one of them a rocker
cushioned in a cheerful red; a battered old desk; a broad and rather
comfortable looking couch: this was nearly all the study's furniture.
There was a fireplace with a crumbling old hearth-stone, and usually a
roaring fire within; and a chimney-piece above, where stood a few
photographs and some odd-looking articles of apparently small value.
On the walls were two small portraits--of an elderly man and woman.
This was absolutely all there was in the room worth mentioning--except
when Brown was in it. Then, of course, there was Brown. This is not a
truism, it is a large, significant fact. When you had once seen Brown in
his study you knew that the room would be empty when he was out of
it, no matter who remained. Not that Brown was such a big,
broad-shouldered, dominating figure of a man. He was so tall and thin
of figure that he looked almost gaunt, and so spare and dark of face that
he appeared almost austere. Yet when you observed him closely he did
not seem really austere, for out of his eyes, of a clear, deep gray, looked

not only power but sympathy, and not only patience but humour. His
mouth was clean-cut and strong, and it could smile in a rather
wonderful way. As to the years he had spent--they might have been
thirty, or forty, or twenty, according to the hour in which one met him.
As a matter of fact he was, at the beginning of this history, not very far
along in the thirties, though when that rather wonderful smile of his
was not in evidence one might have taken him for somewhat older.
I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there was
usually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough,
shaggy coat and the suggestion of collie blood about him--though he
was plainly a mixture of several breeds--Bim belonged to Brown, and
to Brown's immediate environment, whenever Bim himself was able to
accomplish it. When he was not able he was accustomed to wait
patiently outside the door of Brown's small bachelor abode. This door
opened directly from the street into the Brown Study.
The really curious thing about the study was that nobody in that quarter
of the big city knew it was a study. They called the place simply
"_Brown's_." Who Brown himself was they did not know, either. He
had come to live in the little old house about a year ago. He was
dressed so plainly, and everything about him, including his manner,
was of such an unobtrusive simplicity, that he attracted little
attention--at first. Soon his immediate neighbours were on terms of
interested acquaintanceship with him, though how they got there they
could not themselves have told--it had never occurred to them to
wonder. The thing had come about naturally, somehow. Presently
others besides his immediate neighbours knew Brown, had become
friends of Brown. They never wondered how it had happened.
The Brown Study had many callers. It was by now thoroughly used to
them, for it had all sorts, every day of the month, at any hour of the day,
at almost any hour of the night.

II
BROWN'S
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