Grim Tales read by Gabriel Green
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Grim Tales by E Nesbitt. The Ebony Frame to be rich is a luxurious sensation. The more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard up as a fleet street hack, a picker up of unconsidered pas, a reporter and unappreciated journalist. All callings utterly inconsistent with one's family feeling and one's direct dissent from the Dukes of Picardi. When my aunt Dorcus died and left me 700 a year and a furnished house in Chelsea. I felt that life had nothing left to offer except immediate possession of the legacy. Even Mildred Mayhew, whom I had hitherto regarded as my life's light became less luminous. I was not engaged to Mildred, but I lodged with her mother and I sang duets with Mildred and gave her gloves when it would run to it, which was seldom. She was a dear, good girl and I meant to marry her someday. It is very nice to feel that a good little woman is thinking of you. It helps you in your work and it is pleasant to know. She will say yes, when you say will you. But as I say, my legacy almost put Mildred out of my head, especially as she was staying with friends in the country. Just then before the first gloss was off. My new morning. I was seated in my aunt's own armchair in front of the fire in the dining room of my own house. My own house. It was grand but rather lonely. I did think of Mildred. Just then. The room was comfortably furnished with oak and leather on the walls, hung a few fairly good oil paintings. But the space above the mantelpiece was disfigured by an exceedingly bad print. The trial of Lord William Russell framed in a dark frame. I got up to look at it. I had visited my aunt with dutiful regularity, but I never remembered seeing this frame before. It was not intended for a print, but for an oil painting, it was a fine ebony, beautifully and curiously carved. I looked at it with growing interest and when my aunt's house maid, I had retained her modest staff of servants came in with the lamp. I asked her how long the print had been there? Mistress only bought it two days before she was took ill. She said, but the frame, she didn't want to buy a new one. So she got this out of the attic. There's lots of curious old things there, sir. Had my aunt had this frame long. Oh, yes, sir. It come long before I did. And I've been here seven years come Christmas. There was a picture in it that's upstairs too. But it's that black and ugly. It might as well be a chimney back. I felt a desire to see this picture. What if it was some priceless old master in which my aunt's eyes had only seen rubbish directly after breakfast. The next morning I paid a visit to the lumber room.