Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Single mothers -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Courtland brought them that evening, much against his will. Who was she
to have her wretched little belongings sent down to her in a motor-car?
He was obliged to assert himself, to proclaim his independence and his
superiority. He stood outside the door with his finger on the bell so
that it rang in one long, maddening clamour, and he kicked at the door.
He made an outrageous noise.
Angelica came flying down the hall in a fury, and flung open the door.
"What do you mean?" she cried. "Where do you think you are, anyway?"
Courtland stared at her for a minute. Then, making an imaginary
lorgnette of his thumb and forefinger, he peered through it, bending
forward from the waist in a preposterous and unseemly attitude.
"Aeoh!" he exclaimed, in a simpering voice. "I beg your pawdon, I’m
suah! I forgot myself, really, don’tcher know! If you will kindly permit
me to enter this mansion, I will deliver to you this package of jools
sent by the dook!"
"Give it to me and shut your mouth," said Angelica.
"What’s all this?" called Mrs. Kennedy from her bed. "Who is it, Angie?"
"Only the chauffeur. He brought some of my things," her daughter
answered in a contemptuous tone.
There was something about her child’s words and tone that jarred upon
Mrs. Kennedy. She came out of the bedroom in her new flannel wrapper,
and addressed Courtland with ceremonious politeness.
"I’m sure we’re very much obliged to you," she said. "Won’t you step in?
Maybe you’d take a cup of tea, and rest a few minutes?"
"Rest!" said Angelica. "He never does anything else!"
Courtland ignored her.
"I don’t care if I do," he said to Mrs. Kennedy, and followed her into
the kitchen, where he sat down heavily on the step-ladder chair. "I’m as
tired as a dawg," he said, with his invariable air of grievance. "It’s
enough to make you sick--driving that woman all over the country. No
more consideration, she’s got, than a--than a dawg!"
"Well," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I suppose that’s what you’re paid for."
"I know it!" he agreed, plaintively. "That’s all right; but then what
does she want to be telling me I’m too good to be a chauffeur for? She
says there’s lots of fellows in college hasn’t got my brains. And this
golf! There she’s got me the bag of clubs that cost Gawd knows what, and
she just started showing me the way to use them. She said I was doing
fine, and then, all of a sudden, she dropped it, and never said another
word about it. I waited. After a while I began putting the bag of clubs
in the car, to remind her. No, not a word! So I says to her to-day,
‘What about this here golf?’ And she says, with that grin of hers, ‘Oh,
I hawdly think it’s worth while going on. I’m afraid it was a
mistake’--and tells me I can sell the clubs!"
"What of it?" inquired Mrs. Kennedy. "They’re no good to you. I can’t
see any sense in your learning to play golf. I can’t see what you have
to complain of."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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