Silver Wings

© 2014 by Grace Livingston Hill

eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63058-194-7
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63058-193-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Published by Barbour Books, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

About the Author

Chapter 1

Amory had walked from the station to save the taxi fare, but had she realized the distance, even her courageous heart might have hesitated.

“Third mansion on the right, not the third residence—” the cryptic station agent had advised her tersely, and Amory envisioned a possible row of neat two-story brick homes, with larger houses beyond set in wide lawns. She picked up her suitcase briskly and stepped off down the elm-shaded road. Her trunk would follow later.

The street opened out amply and leisurely with no houses at all for some distance, nothing but green fields edged by neat hedges. Then a large old-fashioned brick house emerged in glimpses through the trees. It was set far back in a well-kept lawn, with a flower garden at one side. She paused and studied it. Was this a residence or a mansion? Had she possibly made a mistake and turned the wrong way at the station? But no, the agent had been watching her. He would surely have told her if she had been wrong.

She gave the brick house another appraising glance and revised her ideas of residences and incidentally of Briarcliffe. If such palaces as this one on her right were mere residences, what would the mansions be? And if she had come to live in a mansion, would the modest wardrobe contained in her small shabby suitcase and her small shabby trunk suffice, even for a social secretary? Somewhat apprehensively she went on and presently passed a big white colonial house enmeshed by a labyrinth of small, box hedges. Two lovely stone houses were next, built long and low like bungalows, with arched lattices covered with roses in bloom. And cozy homelike gardens. Well, at least these were not mansions, but still, they spoke of wealth. Perhaps the agent meant these were not to be counted, and the first two must have been mansions. That was it, probably.

The next place was Norman in architecture. She decided it was the third mansion and walked confidently up the drive and rang the doorbell. But the maid who answered the door answered curtly that the Whitneys did not live there. She did not know where they lived. She was new at the place, and the folks were all out.

Amory went back to the street again and stood, bewildered, but finally decided to go on, as there was no one in sight whom she could ask.

The next house was another colonial, smaller than the first, and she hardly knew whether to class it as a mansion or not. Three more houses she passed doubtfully, and then another large stone house with elaborate awnings and a wide orange and black umbrella spread over a tea table on the lawn.

There were some children playing around a fountain, and a man was cutting the hedge about the terrace. She decided to try again.

The children only stared when she asked them, but the man turned from his work and told her, “It’s some ways up the pike, lady. The third large mansion on yer right—”

“But which is the first mansion?” she asked in despair, setting down the suitcase, which now was making her feel its every pound. “Do you count from here, or where?”

The man looked at her as if she were an ignoramus, but answered good naturedly, “There’s two more ’ouses, lady, beyont this, an’ then ye come to the big hestates. It’s the third one of them, ma’am, the third hestate!”

Amory thanked him and picked up her suitcase, but as she went wearily down the walk, she was possessed by a desire to laugh aloud. So she was going to an “hestate”! What would Aunt Hannah say to that? What would Rayport think if they knew? How Helen and Miriam and Esther would exclaim wistfully! How far removed she felt herself already! Could she stand it, this new world that seemed at just this glimpse like another universe? What part had she in a world like this? Oh, of course she had come to work and not to have part in the life at all, but already the little lonesome part of her that lived and loved felt suddenly appalled at the wide difference there would be between this new life and the precious one she had left behind in the quaint, loving, friendly hometown where she had been brought up by her two dear maiden aunts.

But this would not do. She must not get maudlin before she arrived. She was here to earn good money to help get Aunt Hannah the nurse and the specialist she needed and to provide a lot of necessities to make it easier for frail little Aunt Jocelyn now that Amory was not to be there to save her from the hard knocks of life.

So she was to live in a mansion! Well, she might have known it from the size of the salary the Whitneys were willing to pay.