Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ANGELA'S BUSINESS BY HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC R. GRUGER BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1914 AND 1915, BY HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1915_ To JACK _Who does not think as I do._ [Illustration: "I DECIDED I WOULD REFUSE IT"] ILLUSTRATIONS "I DECIDED I WOULD REFUSE IT" "NO! MORALS ARE THE BULWARK OF THE NATION!" CHARLES HAD NO GREAT CHANCE TO SHOW HIS FEARLESSNESS OF PUBLIC OPINION "OH!... WHY DO YOU DO THIS?" "WELL, I WON'T MARRY HER! I WON'T!" ANGELA PEEPED OVER INTO WASHINGTON STREET THIS SPINSTER SUPPLIED A QUIET CHARM "HO!--HAD YOUR SPIES ON ME, HAVE YOU?" ANGELA'S BUSINESS I Being an author actually at work, and not an author being photographed at work by a lady admirer, he did not gaze large-eyed at a poppy in a crystal vase, one hand lightly touching his forehead, the other tossing off page after page in high godlike frenzy. On the contrary, the young man at the table yawned, lolled, sighed, scratched his ear, read snatches of Virginia Carter's "Letters to My Girl Friends" in the morning's "Post," read snatches of any printed matter that happened to be about, and even groaned. When he gazed, it was at no flower, but more probably at his clock, a stout alarm-clock well known to the trade as "Big Bill"; and the clock gazed back, since there was a matter between them this evening, and seemed to say, "Well, are you going to the Redmantle Club, or are you _not_?" But that was precisely the point on which the young man at the table had not yet made up his mind. Of course, if he went to the Redmantle Club, he could not possibly spend the whole evening here, writing, and, oddly enough, this was at once a cogent reason for staying away from the Redmantle Club, and a seductive argument for going to the same. No lady admirer could ever grasp this paradox, but every true writer must admit that I know his secret perfectly. From time to time, no diversion offering, the author would read over the last sentence he had written, which very likely ran as follows:-- We have a society organized on the agreeable assumption that every woman, at twenty-five or thereabouts, finds herself in possession of a home, a husband, and three darling little curly-headed children. Stimulated a trifle, he would thereupon sharpen up his pencil and charge forward a few sentences, as now:--