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twg_000000044700 | sort of uncomfortable, but it is nothing when you are used to it. I had a trapeze chap once who would often go to sleep that way in hot weather. He said that all the blood in his body went into his head, and that made him feel sleepy, while it cooled off his body and legs. There's no accounting | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044701 | for tastes, but as for me, give me a good bed where I can stretch out, and I'll never ask to sleep on a trapeze bar. "As I was saying, the Female Samson would swing on this bar, and then she would take the Dwarf's belt in her teeth and hold him in that way for five minutes. There was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044702 | a swivel in the belt, so that the Dwarf would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn't like much, but which pleased the public. After she had swung the Dwarf she would do the same act with the Giant. She had to be very careful not to drop the Giant, for he was terribly afraid of breaking | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044703 | a leg, being, as I have said, particularly brittle; but she always said that he was as safe in her teeth as he would be if he was lying in his bed. "It must have been about a fortnight after the Dwarf was sat on by the Fat Woman, and a week or more after he had been corrected in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044704 | public by the Female Samson, that we had an unusually large evening audience, and everybody was in excellent spirits. The Female Samson had swung the Dwarf in her teeth, and after she had let go of him he had climbed up on a chair just behind her, and stood with his arms stretched out over her and the Giant as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044705 | if he was saying 'Bless you, my children,' which was a regular part of the act, and never failed to bring him a round of applause, and induce people to say, 'What a jolly little chap that Dwarf is!' When the Female Samson had got a good grip of the Giant's belt, and had raised him about five feet from | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044706 | the floor, the Dwarf leaned a little bit forward and ran a pin into the Female Samson's ankle, or thereabouts. Nobody saw him do it, but it was easy to prove it on him afterwards, for he dropped the pin on the floor when he had finally got through with it, and everybody recognised it as one of his scarf-pins. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044707 | "The woman would naturally have shrieked when she felt the pin, but she had her mouth full of the Giant, and she couldn't do more than mumble a little in a half-smothered sort of way. The Dwarf paid no attention to that, but gave her another eye-opener with the pin. It went in about an inch, judging from what the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044708 | Female Samson said when she described her sufferings, and it must have hurt her pretty bad; but she was full of pluck and bound to carry out her performance to the end. She stood three or four more prods, and then, not being able to stand it any longer without expressing her feelings in some way, she unhooked one leg | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044709 | and fetched the Dwarf a kick on the side of the head that reminded him that it was about time for him to get into his own room and lock the door, and convinced him that there ain't a bit of exaggeration in the tough stories that they tell about the kicking powers of an army mule. The kick sent | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044710 | the Dwarf clean across the platform, and the people, not understanding the situation, began to cry 'Shame.' Whether this flurried the Female Samson or not, or whether she lost her balance entirely on account of having unhooked one leg, I don't know. What I do know is that she slipped off the bar, and she and the Giant struck the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044711 | floor with a crash that would have broken planks, if it had not been that the platform was built expressly to stand the strain of the Fat Woman. "It wouldn't have been so bad if she had just dropped the Giant, and hung on to the bar herself. In that case he would probably have broken his left leg and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044712 | arm and collar bone, just as he did break them, but his ribs would have been all right. As it was, the Female Samson's head came down just in the centre of him, and stove in about three-fourths of his ribs. She wasn't hurt at all, for, being a woman, and falling on her head, there was nothing for her | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044713 | to break, and the Giant was so soft that falling on him didn't even give her a headache. When some volunteers from the audience had picked up the Giant and put him on a stretcher and carried him to the hospital, where the doctors did their best to mend him, the Female Samson had a chance to explain, and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044714 | finding of a long scarf-pin on the platform, just under the bar, was evidence that she had told the truth, and corroborated the red stain on her stocking. [Illustration: "IT TOOK FOUR MEN AND A POLICEMAN TO HOLD HER."] "It took four men and a policeman to hold her, and get her locked up in her room, she was that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044715 | set on tearing the Dwarf into small pieces, and she'd have done it too, if she could have got at him. He had sense enough to see the situation, and to discharge himself without waiting for me to discharge him. He ran away in the course of the night, and I never saw him again. I don't think he ever | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044716 | went into another Dime Museum, and I have heard that he got a situation as inspector of gas meters, which is very probable, considering what a malicious little rascal he was. Well, we have to deal with all sorts of people in our business, and I suppose it's the same with you, though you haven't mentioned what your business is. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044717 | But you take my advice and steer clear of Dwarfs. There ain't a man living that can do anything with them except with a club, and no man likes to take a club to anything as small as a Dwarf." W. L. ALDEN. * * * * * _Lamps of all Kinds and Times._ [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044718 | * _Two Styles: A Tale with a Moral._ [Illustration] Uffizzi Robbinson was blessed with a very full rich, tenor voice but a very empty purse and he stood in need of a HOLIDAY. So he cut his hair & otherwise disguised himself & went off to Brighton, and having hired a piano & boy took up his station on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044719 | front and started in to make his fortune. He sang song after song, all of them highly classical, in his most approved style, but his audience being limited and critical, his prospects looked gloomy. A gentle hint from his boy set him thinking!! He DISAPPEARED!!! A shadow on the blind gave the only indication of what he was doing!! Until | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044720 | one evening he reappeared on the front in all the glories of collar & banjo, sang vulgar comic songs in a vulgar comic manner to a vast and appreciative audience and lived in clover for the rest of the season. * * * * * | 45 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044721 | E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Sarah Lewis, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders Tenterhooks [ of The Little Ottleys] by Ada Leverson TO ROBERT ROSS A Verbal Invitation Because Edith had not been feeling very well, that seemed no reason why she should be the centre of interest; and Bruce, with that jealousy of the privileges of the invalid and in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044722 | that curious spirit of rivalry which his wife had so often observed, had started, with enterprise, an indisposition of his own, as if to divert public attention. While he was at Carlsbad he heard the news. Then he received a letter from Edith, speaking with deference and solicitude of Bruce's rheumatism, entreating him to do the cure thoroughly, and suggesting | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044723 | that they should call the little girl Matilda, after a rich and sainted--though still living--aunt of Edith's. It might be an advantage to the child's future (in every sense) to have a godmother so wealthy and so religious. It appeared from the detailed description that the new daughter had, as a matter of course (and at two days old), long | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044724 | golden hair, far below her waist, sweeping lashes and pencilled brows, a rosebud mouth, an intellectual forehead, chiselled features and a tall, elegant figure. She was a magnificent, regal-looking creature and was a superb beauty of the classic type, and yet with it she was dainty and winsome. She had great talent for music. This, it appeared, was shown by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044725 | the breadth between the eyes and the timbre of her voice. Overwhelmed with joy at the advent of such a paragon, and horrified at Edith's choice of a name, Bruce had replied at once by wire, impulsively: _'Certainly not Matilda I would rather she were called Aspasia.'_ Edith read this expression of feeling on a colourless telegraph form, and as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044726 | she was, at Knightsbridge, unable to hear the ironical tone of the message she took it literally. She criticised the name, but was easily persuaded by her mother-in-law to make no objection. The elder Mrs Ottley pointed out that it might have been very much worse. 'But it's not a pretty name,' objected Edith. 'If it wasn't to be Matilda, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044727 | I should rather have called her something out of Maeterlinck--Ygraine, or Ysolyn--something like that.' 'Yes, dear, Mygraine's a nice name, too,' said Mrs Ottley, in her humouring way, 'and so is Vaselyn. But what does it really matter? I shouldn't hold out on a point like this. One gets used to a name. Let the poor child be called Asparagus | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044728 | if he wishes it, and let him feel he has got his own way.' So the young girl was named Aspasia Matilda Ottley. It was characteristic of Edith that she kept to her own point, though not aggressively. When Bruce returned after his after-cure, it was too late to do anything but pretend he had meant it seriously. Archie called | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044729 | his sister Dilly. Archie had been rather hurt at the--as it seemed to him--unnecessary excitement about Dilly. Not that he was jealous in any way. It was rather that he was afraid it would spoil her to be made so much of at her age; make her, perhaps, egotistical and vain. But it was not Archie's way to show these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044730 | fears openly. He did not weep loudly or throw things about as many boys might have done. His methods were more roundabout, more subtle. He gave hints and suggestions of his views that should have been understood by the intelligent. He said one morning with some indirectness: 'I had such a lovely dream last night, Mother.' 'Did you, pet? How | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044731 | sweet of you. What was it?' 'Oh, nothing much. It was all right. Very nice. It was a lovely dream. I dreamt I was in heaven.' 'Really! How delightful. Who was there?' This is always a woman's first question. 'Oh, you were there, of course. And father. Nurse, too. It was a lovely dream. Such a nice place.' 'Was Dilly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044732 | there?' 'Dilly? Er--no--no--she wasn't. She was in the night nursery, with Satan.' Sometimes Edith thought that her daughter's names were decidedly a failure--Aspasia by mistake, Matilda through obstinacy, and Dilly by accident. However the child herself was a success. She was four years old when the incident occurred about the Mitchells. The whole of this story turns eventually on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044733 | Mitchells. The Ottleys lived in a concise white flat at Knightsbridge. Bruce's father had some time ago left him a good income on certain conditions; one was that he was not to leave the Foreign Office before he was fifty. One afternoon Edith was talking to the telephone in a voice of agonised entreaty that would have melted the hardest | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044734 | of hearts, but did not seem to have much effect on the Exchange, which, evidently, was not responsive to pathos that day. 'Oh! Exchange, _why_ are you ringing off? _Please_ try again.... Do I want any number? Yes, I do want any number, of course, or why should I ring up?... I want Gerrard.' Here Archie interposed. 'Mother, can I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044735 | have your long buttonhook?' 'No, Archie, you can't just now, dear.... Go away Archie.... Yes, I said Gerrard. Only Gerrard!... Are you there? Oh, don't keep on asking me if I've got them!... No, they haven't answered.... Are you ?... Oh--wrong number--sorry.... Gerrard? Only six--are you there?... Not Gerrard?... Are you anyone else?... Oh, is it you, Vincy?... I want | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044736 | to tell you--' 'Mother, can I have your long buttonhook?' Here Bruce came in. Edith rang off. Archie disappeared. 'It's really rather wonderful, Edith, what that Sandow exerciser has done for me! You laughed at me at first, but I've improved marvellously.' Bruce was walking about doing very mild gymnastics, and occasionally hitting himself on the left arm with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044737 | right fist.' Look at my muscle--look at it--and all in such a short time!' 'Wonderful!' said Edith. 'The reason I know what an extraordinary effect these few days have had on me is something I have just done which I couldn't have done before. Of course I'm naturally a very powerful man, and only need a little--' 'What have you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044738 | done?' 'Why--you know that great ridiculous old wooden chest that your awful Aunt Matilda sent you for your birthday--absurd present I call it--mere lumber.' 'Yes?' 'When it came I could barely push it from one side of the room to the other. Now I've lifted it from your room to the box-room. Quite easily. Pretty good, isn't it?' 'Yes, of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044739 | course it's very good for you to do all these exercises; no doubt it's capital.... Er--you know I've had all the things taken out of the chest since you tried it before, don't you?' 'Things--what things? I didn't know there was anything in it.' 'Only a silver tea-service, and a couple of salvers,' said Edith, in a low voice.... ...He | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044740 | calmed down fairly soon and said: 'Edith, I have some news for you. You know the Mitchells?' 'Do I know the _Mitchells_? Mitchell, your hero in your office, that you're always being offended with--at _least_ I know the Mitchells by _name_. I ought to.' 'Well, what do you think they've done? They've asked us to dinner.' 'Have they? Fancy!' 'Yes, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044741 | and what I thought was so particularly jolly of him was that it was a verbal invitation. Mitchell said to me, just like this, 'Ottley, old chap, are you doing anything on Sunday evening?'' Here Archie came to the door and said, 'Mother, can I have your long buttonhook?' Edith shook her head and frowned. ''Ottley, old chap,'' continued Bruce, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044742 | ''are you and your wife doing anything on Sunday? If not, I do wish you would waive ceremony and come and dine with us. Would Mrs Ottley excuse a verbal invitation, do you think?' I said, 'Well, Mitchell, as a matter of fact I don't believe we have got anything on. Yes, old boy, we shall be delighted.' I accepted, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044743 | you see. I accepted straight out. When you're treated in a friendly way, I always say why be unfriendly? And Mrs Mitchell is a charming little woman--I'm sure you'd like her. It seems she's been dying to know you.' 'Fancy! I wonder she's still alive, then, because you and Mitchell have known each other for eight years, and I've never | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044744 | met her yet.' 'Well, you will now. Let bygones be bygones. They live in Hamilton Place.' 'Oh yes....Park Lane?' 'I told you he was doing very well, and his wife has private means.' 'Mother,' Archie began again, like a litany, 'can I have your long buttonhook? I know where it is.' 'No, Archie, certainly not; you can't fasten laced boots | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044745 | with a buttonhook.... Well, that will be fun, Bruce.' 'I believe they're going to have games after dinner,' said Bruce. 'All very jolly--musical crambo--that sort of thing.... What shall you wear, Edith?' 'Mother, do let me have your long buttonhook. I want it. It isn't for my boots.' '_Certainly_ not. What a nuisance you are! Do go away.... I think | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044746 | I shall wear my salmon-coloured dress with the sort of mayonnaise- coloured sash.... (No, you're not to have it, Archie).' 'But, Mother, I've got it.... I can soon mend it, Mother.' On Sunday evening Bruce's high spirits seemed to flag; he had one of his sudden reactions. He looked at everything on its dark side. 'What on earth's that thing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044747 | in your hair, Edith?' 'It's a bandeau.' 'I don't like it. Your hair looks very nice without it. What on _earth_ did you get it for?' 'For about six-and-eleven, I think.' 'Don't be trivial, Edith. We shall be late. Ah! It really does seem rather a pity, the very first time one dines with people like the Mitchells.' 'We sha'n't | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044748 | be late, Bruce. It's eight o'clock, and eight o'clock I suppose means--well, eight. Sure you've got the number right?' 'Really. Edith!... My memory is unerring, dear. I never make a mistake. Haven't you ever noticed it?' 'A--oh yes--I think I have.' 'Well, it's Hamilton Place. Look sharp, dear.' On their way in the taxi he gave her a good many | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044749 | instructions and advised her to be perfectly at her ease and _absolutely natural_; there was nothing to make one otherwise, in either Mr or Mrs Mitchell. Also, he said, it didn't matter a bit what she wore, as long as she had put on her _best_ dress. It seemed a pity she had not got a new one, but this | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044750 | couldn't be helped, as there was now no time. Edith agreed that she knew of no really suitable place where she could buy a new evening dress at eight-thirty on Sunday evening. And, anyhow, he said, she looked quite nice, really very smart; besides, Mrs Mitchell was not the sort of person who would think any the less of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044751 | pretty woman for being a little dowdy and out of fashion. When they drove up to what house agents call in their emotional way a superb, desirable, magnificent town mansion, they saw that a large dinner-party was evidently going on. A hall porter and four powdered footmen were in evidence. 'By Jove!' said Bruce, as he got out, 'I'd no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044752 | idea old Mitchell did himself so well as this.'... The butler had never heard of the Mitchells. The house belonged to Lord Rosenberg. 'Confound it! 'said Bruce, as he flung himself into the taxi. 'Well! I've made a mistake for once in my life. I admit it. Of course, it's really Hamilton Gardens. Sorry. Yet somehow I'm rather glad Mitchell | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044753 | doesn't live in that house.' 'You are perfectly right,' said Edith: 'the bankruptcy of an old friend and colleague could be no satisfaction to any man.' Hamilton Gardens was a gloomy little place, like a tenement building out of Marylebone Road. Bruce, in trying to ring the bell, unfortunately turned out all the electric light in the house, and was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044754 | standing alone in despair in the dark when, fortunately the porter, who had been out to post a letter, ran back, and turned up the light again.... 'I shouldn't have thought they could play musical crambo here, 'he called out to Edith while he was waiting. 'And now isn't it odd? I have a funny kind of feeling that the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044755 | right address is Hamilton House.' 'I suppose you're perfectly certain they don't live at a private idiot asylum?' Edith suggested doubtfully. On inquiry it appeared the Mitchells did not live at Hamilton Gardens. An idea occurred to Edith, and she asked for a directory. The Winthrop Mitchells lived at Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood. 'At last!' said Bruce. 'Now we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044756 | shall be too disgracefully late for the first time. But be perfectly at your ease, dear. Promise me that. Go in quite naturally.' 'How else can I go in?' 'I mean as if nothing had happened.' 'I think we'd better tell them what _has_ happened,' said Edith; 'it will make them laugh. I hope they will have begun their dinner.' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044757 | 'Surely they will have finished it.' 'Perhaps we may find them at their games!' 'Now, now, don't be bitter, Edith dear--never be bitter--life has its ups and downs.... Well! I'm rather glad, after all, that Mitchell doesn't live in that horrid little hole.' 'I'm sure you are,' said Edith; 'it could be no possible satisfaction to you to know that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044758 | a friend and colleague of yours is either distressingly hard up or painfully penurious.' They arrived at the house, but there were no lights, and no sign of life. The Mitchells lived here all right, but they were out. The parlourmaid explained. The dinner-party had been Saturday, the night before.... 'Strange,' said Bruce, as he got in again. 'I had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044759 | a curious presentiment that something was going wrong about this dinner at the Mitchells'.' 'What dinner at the Mitchells'? There doesn't seem to be any.' 'Do you know,' Bruce continued his train of thought, 'I felt certain somehow that it would be a failure. Wasn't it odd? I often think I'm a pessimist, and yet look how well I'm taking | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044760 | it. I'm more like a fatalist--sometimes I hardly know what I am.' 'I could tell you what you are,' said Edith, 'but I won't, because now you must take me to the Carlton. We shall get there before it's closed.' Opera Glasses Whether to behave with some coolness to Mitchell, and be stand-offish, as though it had been all his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044761 | fault, or to be lavishly apologetic, was the question. Bruce could not make up his mind which attitude to take. In a way, it was all the Mitchells' fault. They oughtn't to have given him a verbal invitation. It was rude, Bohemian, wanting in good form; it showed an absolute and complete ignorance of the most ordinary and elementary usages | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044762 | of society. It was wanting in common courtesy; really, when one came to think about it, it was an insult. On the other hand, technically, Bruce was in the wrong. Having accepted he ought to have turned up on the right night. It may have served them right (as he said), but the fact of going on the wrong night | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044763 | being a lesson to them seemed a little obscure. Edith found it difficult to see the point. Then he had a more brilliant idea; to go into the office as cheerily as ever, and say to Mitchell pleasantly, 'We're looking forward to next Saturday, old chap,' pretending to have believed from the first that the invitation had been for the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044764 | Saturday week; and that the dinner was still to come.... This, Edith said, would have been excellent, provided that the parlourmaid hadn't told them that she and Bruce had arrived about a quarter to ten on Sunday evening and asked if the Mitchells had begun dinner. The chances against the servant having kept this curious incident to herself were almost | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044765 | too great. After long argument and great indecision the matter was settled by a cordial letter from Mrs Mitchell, asking them to dinner on the following Thursday, and saying she feared there had been some mistake. So that was all right. Bruce was in good spirits again; he was pleased too, because he was going to the theatre that evening | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044766 | with Edith and Vincy, to see a play that he thought wouldn't be very good. He had almost beforehand settled what he thought of it, and practically what he intended to say. But when he came in that evening he was overheard to have a strenuous and increasingly violent argument with Archie in the hall. Edith opened the door and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044767 | wanted to know what the row was about. 'Will you tell me, Edith, where your son learns such language? He keeps on worrying me to take him to the Zoological Gardens to see the--well--you'll hear what he says. The child's a perfect nuisance. Who put it into his head to want to go and see this animal? I was obliged | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044768 | to speak quite firmly to him about it.' Edith was not alarmed that Bruce had been severe. She thought it much more likely that Archie had spoken very firmly to him. He was always strict with his father, and when he was good Bruce found fault with him. As soon as he grew really tiresome his father became abjectly apologetic. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044769 | Archie was called and came in, dragging his feet, and pouting, in tears that he was making a strenuous effort to encourage. 'You must be firm with him,' continued Bruce. 'Hang it! Good heavens! Am I master in my own house or am I not?' There was no reply to this rhetorical question. He turned to Archie and said in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044770 | a gentle, conciliating voice: 'Archie, old chap, tell your mother what it is you want to see. Don't cry, dear.' 'Want to see the damned chameleon,' said Archie, with his hands in his eyes. 'Want father to take me to the Zoo.' 'You can't go to the Zoo this time of the evening. What do you mean?' 'I want to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044771 | see the damned chameleon.' 'You hear!' exclaimed Bruce to Edith. 'Who taught you this language?' 'Miss Townsend taught it me.' 'There! It's dreadful, Edith; he's becoming a reckless liar. Fancy her dreaming of teaching him such things! If she did, of course she must be mad, and you must send her away at once. But I'm quite sure she didn't.' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044772 | 'Come, Archie, you know Miss Townsend never taught you to say that. What have you got into your head?' 'Well, she didn't exactly teach me to say it--she didn't give me lessons in it--but she says it herself. She said the damned chameleon was lovely; and I want to see it. She didn't say I ought to see it. But | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044773 | I want to. I've been wanting to ever since. She said it at lunch today, and I do want to. Lots of other boys go to the Zoo, and why shouldn't I? I want to see it so much.' 'Edith, I must speak to Miss Townsend about this very seriously. In the first place, people have got no right to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044774 | talk about queer animals to the boy at all--we all know what he is--and in such language! I should have thought a girl like Miss Townsend, who has passed examinations in Germany, and so forth, would have had more sense of her responsibility--more tact. It shows a dreadful want of--I hardly know what to think of it--the daughter of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044775 | clergyman, too!' 'It's all right, Bruce,' Edith laughed. 'Miss Townsend told me she had been to see the _Dame aux Camlias_ some time ago. She was enthusiastic about it. Archie dear, I'll take you to the Zoological Gardens and we'll see lots of other animals. And don't use that expression.' 'What! Can't I see the da--' 'Mr Vincy,' announced the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044776 | servant. 'I must go and dress,' said Bruce. Vincy Wenham Vincy was always called by everyone simply Vincy. Applied to him it seemed like a pet name. He had arrived at the right moment, as he always did. He was very devoted to both Edith and Bruce, and he was a confidant of both. He sometimes said to Edith that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044777 | he felt he was just what was wanted in the little home; an intimate stranger coming in occasionally with a fresh atmosphere was often of great value (as, for instance, now) in calming or averting storms. Had anyone asked Vincy exactly what he was he would probably have said he was an Observer, and really he did very little else, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044778 | though after he left Oxford he had taken to writing a little, and painting less. He was very fair, the fairest person one could imagine over five years old. He had pale silky hair, a minute fair moustache, very good features, a single eyeglass, and the appearance, always, of having been very recently taken out of a bandbox. But when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044779 | people fancied from this look of his that he was an empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken. He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and _was_ sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be comfortable, but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those who were. He had a number of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044780 | relatives in high places, who bored him, and were always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the cynical analyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and ardently sympathetic and almost too | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044781 | impressionable and enthusiastic. It was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself. No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no type of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other subject agreed in liking Vincy. But he did not care | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044782 | in the least for acquaintances, and spent much ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites. His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He delighted in Bruce, but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044783 | had with Edith, of course, more mutual understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood. Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044784 | an example of the absurdity of a tradition--'the world's' proneness to calumny. Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued. Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in time. No-one had ever even tried to explain away the intimacy, though | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044785 | Bruce had all the air of being unable to do without Vincy's society sometimes cynically attributed to husbands in a different position. Vincy was pleased with the story of the Mitchells that Edith told him, and she was glad to hear that he knew the Mitchells and had been to the house. 'How like you to know everyone. What did | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044786 | they do?' 'The night I was there they played games,' said Vincy. He spoke in a soft, even voice. 'It was just a little--well--perhaps just a _tiny_ bit ghastly, I thought; but don't tell Bruce. That evening I thought the people weren't quite young enough, and when they played 'Oranges and Lemons, and the Bells of St Clements,' and so | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044787 | on--their bones seemed to--well, sort of rattle, if you know what I mean. But still perhaps it was only my fancy. Mitchell has such very high spirits, you see, and is determined to make everything go. He won't have conventional parties, and insists on plenty of verve; so, of course, one's forced to have it.' He sighed. 'They haven't any | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044788 | children, and they make a kind of hobby of entertaining in an unconventional way.' 'It sounds rather fun. Perhaps you will be asked next Thursday. Try.' 'I'll try. I'll call, and remind her of me. I daresay she'll ask me. She's very good-natured. She believes in spiritualism, too.' 'I wonder who'll be there?' 'Anyone might be there, or anyone else. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044789 | As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual sance, or Kubelik, or fancy dress heads.' 'Fancy dress heads!' 'Yes. Or a cotillion, or just bridge. You never know. The house is rather like a country house, and they behave accordingly. Even hide-and-seek, I believe, sometimes. And Mitchell adores unpractical jokes, too.' 'I see. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044790 | It's rather exciting that I'm going to the Mitchells at last.' 'Yes, perhaps it will be the turning-point of your life,' said Vincy. 'Ah! here's Bruce.' 'I don't think much of that opera glass your mother gave you,' Bruce remarked to his wife, soon after the curtain rose. 'It's the fashion,' said Edith. 'It's jade--the latest thing.' 'I don't care | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044791 | if it is the fashion. It's no use. Here, try it, Vincy.' He handed it to Vincy, who gave Bruce a quick look, and then tried it. 'Rather quaint and pretty, I think. I like the effect,' he said, handing it back to Bruce. 'It may be quaint and pretty, and it may be the latest thing, and it may | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044792 | be jade,' said Bruce rather sarcastically, 'but I'm not a slave to fashion. I never was. And I don't see any use whatever in an opera glass that makes everything look smaller instead of larger, and at a greater distance instead of nearer. I call it rot. I always say what I think. And you can tell your mother what | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044793 | I said if you like.' 'You're looking through it the wrong side, dear,' said Edith. The Golden Quoribus Edith had been very pretty at twenty, but at twenty-eight her prettiness had immensely increased; she had really become a beauty of a particularly troubling type. She had long, deep blue eyes, clearly-cut features, hair of that soft, fine light brown just | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044794 | tinged with red called by the French chtain clair; and a flower-like complexion. She was slim, but not angular, and had a reposeful grace and a decided attraction for both men and women. They generally tried to express this fascination by discovering resemblances in her to various well-known pictures of celebrated artists. She had been compared to almost every type | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044795 | of all the great painters: Botticelli, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough, Burne-Jones. Some people said she was like a Sargent, others called her a post-impressionist type; there was no end to the old and new masters of whom she seemed to remind people; and she certainly had the rather insidious charm of somehow recalling the past while suggesting something undiscovered in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044796 | the future. There was a good deal that was enigmatic about her. It was natural, not assumed as a pose of mysteriousness. She was not all on the surface: not obvious. One wondered. Was she capable of any depth of feeling? Was she always just sweet and tactful and clever, or could there be another side to her character? Had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044797 | she (for instance) a temperament? This question was considered one of interest,--so Edith had a great many admirers. Some were new and fickle, others were old and faithful. She had never yet shown more than a conversational interest in any of them, but always seemed to be laughing with a soft mockery at her own success. Edith was not a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044798 | vain woman, not even much interested in dress, though she had a quick eye and a sure impressionistic gift for it. She was always an immense favourite with women, who felt subconsciously grateful to her for her wonderful forbearance. To have the power and not to use it! To be so pretty, yet never _to take_ _anyone away_!--not even coldly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000044799 | display her conquests. But this liking she did not, as a rule, return in any decided fashion. She had dreadfully little to say to the average woman, except to a few intimate friends, and frankly preferred the society of the average man, although she had not as yet developed a taste for coquetry, for which she had, however, many natural | 60 | gutenberg |
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