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Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family--one of the
rare exceptions in life or in fiction--that had never known better days.
The Montagues, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in
the Mayflower, but were detained at Delft Haven by the illness of a
child. They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus
escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of
the Mayflower Pilgrims have descended. Having no factitious weight of
dignity to carry, the Montagues steadily improved their condition from
the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than
at the date of this narrative. With character compacted by the rigid
Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its
strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now
blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague,
a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in
rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mansion a quarter
of a mile away from the green. It was called a mansion because it stood
alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to
it from the road, and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little
lake with gentle slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the
generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who
had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases,
dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just
a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an
unpretending hospitality.
The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter
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