Detective Downey

by Mrs. Cashel Heey

Quorn Lodge, situated in a felicitously chosen part of on eminently genteel suburb, which shall be called “out of” its proper name for obvious reasons, was a desirable residence. Its designation was preposterous, but that did not matter; suburbs have a chartered right to silliness in the matter of names. There were admiring friends of the handsome Mrs. Morrison who held that it was an equally original and sweet idea of hers to call the brand new villa, with all the modern improvements and the day-after-tomorrow fashions in decoration, Quorn Lodge, for among the glowing reminiscences of her unmarried estate with which Mrs. Morrison was wont to entertain the elite of Riverside feats in the hunting field figured conspicuously. Now it is well known that there is no more effectual means of conveying a suggestion that one is of “county” antecedents than free and familiar use of the jargon of hunting, especially when the listeners know nothing at all about packs and meets, runs and blanks, and are bashfully dubious concerning the difference between pad and a brush. The handsome and dashing Mrs. Morrison was somehow understood to have “come down” in position by her marriage with Mr. Morrison, who had nothing of the county, but a good deal of the counting house, about him, and the impression was mainly due to that sweet idea of calling the villa Quorn Lodge. “As a tribute to the memory of my dear hunting days—I hope you don’t think it foolish?” she would say, with a glance from her dark eyes and a flash of her white teeth, which largely aided the male auditor to think it a capital notion. As a matter of fact the neighborhood knew nothing about Mrs. Morrison, while all that anybody could want to know about Mr. Morrison was easily to be learned. He was a good looking, well dressed, prosperous man of about 45, in… Read More