Michael Malone - Weebly

not, want not" had been his neighbors' philosophy with
regard to so much as a used soup bone, much less a
used house. They said it was lucky that Charles III had
already sent his mother, Augusta, to her grave by
eloping with her parlormaid, because this demolition of
the family homestead would have struck her down even
more cruelly.
Inside, the house was as dark as the outside was
sugar-white. Its rooms were somber and muffled with
thick sofas and drapes. All over the enormous parlor
perched stuffed wild animals and religious icons:
taxidermy and Catholicism having been the two
pastimes of Ramona's long-dead father, Ignatius,
second son of the architectural Charles Bradford
Dingley III and of Bridget Quin, that wily parlormaid
who (according to Charles's mother) had tricked the
sensitive youth into a misalliance (marriage) by telling
him that the Virgin Mary had visited her in the pantry
where she had announced that Bridget and Charles
were destined to give birth to another St.
Francis. As things turned out, their son, Ignatius,
though obsessively religious, had failed to found an