Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Running Sands by Kauffman Reginald Wright
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 2664 lines and 79816 words, and 54 pages
XL.--THE ENGAGEMENT ANNOUNCED 369
L.--EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER 461
PAGE
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET.
"Who can have taken the Ferguses' house, sister?" said a brisk little old lady, peeping through the window blinds. "It's taken! Just come here and look! There's a cart at the door."
"You don't say so!" said Miss Dorcas, her elder sister, flying across the room to the window blinds, behind which Mrs. Betsey sat discreetly ensconced with her knitting work. "Where? Jack, get down, sir!" This last remark was addressed to a rough-coated Dandie Dinmont terrier, who had been winking in a half doze on a cushion at Miss Dorcas's feet. On the first suggestion that there was something to be looked at across the street, Jack had ticked briskly across the room, and now stood on his hind legs on an old embroidered chair, peering through the slats as industriously as if his opinion had been requested. "Get down, sir!" persisted Miss Dorcas. But Jack only winked contumaciously at Mrs. Betsey, whom he justly considered in the light of an ally, planted his toe nails more firmly in the embroidered chair-bottom, and stuck his nose further between the slats, while Mrs. Betsey took up for him, as he knew she would.
"Now, Betsey, how am I ever to teach Jack not to jump on these chairs if you will always take his part? Besides, next we shall know, he'll be barking through the window blinds," said Miss Dorcas.
"Henderson, you say the name is?" said Miss Dorcas.
"Yes. Simons, the provision man at the corner, told me that the house had been bought by a young editor, or something of that sort, named Henderson--somebody that writes for the papers. He married Van Arsdel's daughter."
"What, the Van Arsdels that failed last spring? One of our mushroom New York aristocracy--up to-day and down to-morrow!" commented Miss Dorcas, with an air of superiority. "Poor things!"
"A very imprudent marriage, I don't doubt," sighed Mrs. Betsey. "These upstart modern families never bring up their girls to do anything."
"She seems to be putting her hand to the plough, though," said Miss Dorcas. "See, she actually is lifting out that package herself! Upon my word, a very pretty creature. I think we must take her up."
"The Ferguses were nice," said Mrs. Betsey, "though he was only a newspaper man, and she was a nobody; but she really did quite answer the purpose for a neighbor--not, of course, one of our sort exactly, but a very respectable, lady-like little body."
"Well," said Miss Dorcas, reflectively, "I always said it doesn't do to carry exclusiveness too far. Poor dear Papa was quite a democrat. He often said that he had seen quite good manners and real refinement in people of the most ordinary origin."
"Look there, Betsey, do you suppose that's Mr. Henderson that's coming down the street?" said Miss Dorcas.
At this moment the horse on the other side of the street started prematurely, for some reason best known to himself, and the bureau came down with a thud; and Jack, who considered his opinion as now called for, barked frantically through the blinds.
"Oh, poor doggie!" sighed Mrs. Betsey. "Dorcas, how can you?"
Jack bowed his head and rolled his great soft eyes at her through a silvery thicket of hair.
Jack sat up on his haunches and waved his front paws in a deprecating manner to Miss Dorcas, and the good lady laughed and said, cheerily, "Well, well, Jacky, be a good dog now, and we'll be friends."
And Jacky wagged his tail in the most demonstrative manner, and frisked with triumphant assurance of restored favor. It was the usual end of disciplinary struggles with him. Miss Dorcas sat down to a bit of worsted work on which she had been busy when her attention was first called to the window.
Mrs. Betsey, however, with her nose close to the window blinds, continued to announce the state of things over the way in short jets of communication.
"There! the gentlemen are both gone in--and there! the cart has driven off. Now, they've shut the front door," etc.
After this came a pause of a few moments, in which both sisters worked in silence.
In the mean time it had occurred to Miss Dorcas that this species of minute inquisition into the affairs of neighbors over the way was rather a compromising of her dignity, and she broke out suddenly from a high moral perch on her unconscious sister.
"Nonsense."
"Yes, you did--saved my life, by the great horn spoon, just as the knife-claws of that big grizzly were raised to rip out what passes with me for a heart. I'll never forget it as long as I live."
Stainton wished it forgotten.
"How's the world treating you?" he asked.
"So, so; I mean, badly. In fact, it's not treating me at all; I have to pay for myself, and just enough to pay and none to save, at that. But you--you! Oh, you lucky beast, you!" He shook Stainton by the shoulders and again studied his smiling face. "Good old Jim!" he said.
Stainton's smile went somewhat awry.
"Old?" he echoed. "Oh, I don't know."
He hooked his arm into Stainton's. "Come on and have a drink."
"Thank you, no," said Stainton; "I scarcely ever take anything, you know."
Holt, unlike the waiter, showed his disapproval.
"I know you scarcely ever did out there." He jerked his round face in what he supposed was a westerly direction. "But that's over now. You don't have to be careful now. What's the good of being rich if you have to be careful?"
"Still, I am careful," said Stainton, quietly.
"But on this occasion? Surely not on this occasion, Jim!"
The miner laughed freely now.
"You always were a wonder at discovering occasions, George," he said. "Your occasions were as frequent as saints' days and other holidays in a Mexican peon's calendar."
This was so clearly true that Stainton capitulated, or at least compromised by going to the bar and drinking a thimbleful of white-mint while Holt, chattering like a cheerful magpie--if a magpie can be cheerful--consumed two long glasses of Irish whiskey with a little aerated water added.
Holt made endless plans for his friend. He would "put up" Stainton's name at his club. He would introduce him to this personage and to that. He would--
"Oh, by Jove, yes, and the women!" he interrupted himself. "You've got to go gently there, Jim."
A bright tint showed on Stainton's cheeks.
This was all very pleasant, and Stainton was too honest with himself not to admit so much.
"Marriage," he admitted, "isn't beyond my calculations."
"I think that, if you don't much mind, I shall leave it to myself. There is no hurry, you see."
"Um; yes. I do see. But if there's no hurry, just you wait--just you wait, old man, till you have seen what I can show you. New York is the biggest bond-market and marriage-market in the world." He looked at his watch. "Hello," he said: "I'll be late. Now, look here: where'll you be after the opera? I've got to go there. I hate it, but I have to."
"The opera?" repeated Stainton. "The Metropolitan?"
"Yes, sure."
"But I'm going there myself."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page