Excerpt from The Princes of Peele The hall of an old - fashioned country house. Background, a massive oaken staircase on the walls, several handsomely framed prints a trophy, composed of a fox's mask and half a dozen brushes and stags' antlers, arranged as a hat-stand. In the foreground, vases filled with ferns and flowers. The comely couple standing in the sunlight, which streams in through the doorway, are the master and mistress of the house, Leonard Prince and Dorothy his wife. He is drawing on his gloves, she putting a gardenia in his buttonhole. Mrs. Prince is the stouter, albeit not the taller of the two, a matron of somewhat imposing presence, well-favored, with dark eyes and a fair skin. Mr. Prince, not having thickened with age like his spouse, looks younger than his years, which are far on in the fifties his hair and mutton-chop whiskers are turning white, his comely face is bright with health and high spirits, and his keen gray eyes, strong white teeth, and square jaws bespeak a vigorous constitution, a sanguine temperament, and an energetic character. Thank you very much, my dear, says Mr. Prince as his wife hands him his hat, I think I hear Tommy's step on the gravel. Come with me as far as the lodge gates. Mrs. Prince put on her garden hat, and the two Went out together at the open door. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.