Bicycle touring -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
The good gentleman fairly shouted at me. "You aren't going to any
hotel!" he declared. "Do you suppose we are heathens, to let you start
off at this late hour in the afternoon for a hotel? You have nothing
to do with hotels--you spend the night with us, sir! If you are
thinking about your clothes, pray dismiss the subject from your mind.
If it will make you feel better satisfied, we will all put on golf
suits. In the morning we will get your machine from the Holly Sprig,
and when you want to go on we will send you and it to Waterton in a
wagon. It is not a long drive, and it is much the pleasanter way to
manage your business."
The family showed themselves delighted when they heard that I was to
spend the night with them, and I did not object to the plan, for I had
not the slightest desire to go to a summer hotel. Just before I went
up to my room to get ready for supper, the young Genevieve came to me
upon the porch.
"Would you mind," she said, "letting me feel your muscle?"
Very much surprised, I reached out my arm for her inspection, and she
clasped her long thin fingers around my _biceps flexor cubiti._
Apparently, the inspection was very satisfactory to her.
"I would give anything," she said, "if I had muscle like that!"
I laughed heartily. "My dear little girl," said I, "you would be
sorry, indeed, if you had anything of the sort. When you grow up and
go to parties, how would you like to show bare arms shaped like mine?
You would be a spectacle, indeed."
"Well," said she, "perhaps you are right. I might not care to have
them bulge, but I would like to have them hard."
It was a lively supper and an interesting evening. Miss Edith sat
opposite to me at table--I gave her this title because I was informed
that there was an elder sister who was away on a visit. I could see
that she regarded me as her especial charge. She did not ask me what I
would have, but she saw that every possible want was attended to. As
the table was lighted by a large hanging-lamp, I had a better view of
her features than I had yet obtained. She was not handsome. Her eyes
were too wide apart, her nose needed perhaps an eighth of an inch in
length, and her well-shaped mouth would not have suffered by a slight
reduction. But there was a cheerful honesty in her expression and in
her words which gave me the idea that she was a girl to believe in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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