Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee MagicQuick, Herbert
General
Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
Quick, Herbert
Fiction
He was a short man, with protruding cheeks, and a nose ending in an
amorphous flare of purple and scarlet. His mustache, red like that of
his brother, and constituting the only point of physical resemblance
between them, grew down over a receding chin, being forced thereto by
the bulbous overhang of the nose. He had rufous side-whiskers, clipped
moderately close, and carroty hair mixed with gray. His erect shoulders
and straight back were a little out of keeping with the rotundity of his
figure in other respects; but the combination, hinting, as it did, of
affairs both gastronomic and martial, taken with a manner at once
dignified, formal, and suave, constituted the most intensely respectable
appearance I ever saw. To the imagination of Lattimore he represented
everything of which, Cornish fell short, piling Lombard upon Wall
Street.
The arrival of these gentlemen was the signal for gathering in the
pavilion where dinner was served. The tables were arranged in a great L,
at the apex of which sat Jim and the distinguished guests. On one side
of him sat Mr. Barr-Smith, who listened absorbedly to the conversation
of Mrs. Hinckley, filling every pause with a husky "Quite so!" On the
other sat Josie Trescott, who was smiling upon a very tall and spare old
man who wore a beautiful white mustache and imperial. I had never met
him, but I knew him for General Lattimore. His fondness for Josie was
well known; and to him Jim attributed that young lady's lack of
enthusiasm over our schemes for city-building. His presence at this
gathering was somewhat of a surprise to me.
Antonia and Cecil Barr-Smith, the Tollivers, Mr. Hinckley and Alice,
myself, Mr. Giddings, and Miss Addison sat across the table from the
host. Mrs. Trescott, after expressing wonder at the changes wrought in
the ravine, and confiding to me her disapproval of the useless expense,
had returned to the farm, impelled by that habitual feeling that
something was wrong there. Mr. Giddings was exceedingly attentive to
Miss Addison.
"I know why you're trying to look severe," said he to her, as the
consomme was served; "and it's the only thing I can imagine you making a
failure of, unless it would be looking anything but pretty. But you are
trying it, and I know why. You think they ought to have had some one say
grace before pulling this thing off."
"I'm not trying to look--anyhow," she answered. "But you are right in
thinking that I believe such duties should not be transgressed, for fear
that the world may call us provincial or old-fashioned."
And she shot a glance at Cornish and Barr-Smith as the visible
representatives of the "world."
"Don't listen to that age-old clash between fervor and unregeneracy,"
said Josie across the narrow table, her remarks made possible by the
music of the orchestra, "but tell us about Mr. Barr-Smith and--the other
gentlemen."
"I wanted to ask you about the Britons," said I; "are they good
specimens of the men you saw in England?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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