"Well, Josh," she said in a slow,
pleasant monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw
you. I always knew you'd come to some bad end. And here you are--
in politics and in society. Gus!"
A tall, haughty-looking young woman, standing next her, turned and
fixed upon Craig a pair of deep, deep eyes that somehow flustered
him. Mrs. Burke presented him, and he discovered that it was her
daughter-in-law. While she was talking with Arkwright, he examined
her toilette. He thought it startling--audacious in its display of
shoulders and back--until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling,
and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have
dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was
extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked
his face burned. "If I do pick one of these," said he to himself,
"I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why,
out home women have been white-capped for less."
Arkwright had drifted away from him; he let the crowd gently push
him toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and
ferns. There, with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face
what he thought an excellent imitation of Arkwright's easy, bored
expression of thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and
tried to judge it from the standpoint of the "common people.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30