Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
He spent three days in Wetona that first trip, and every evening saw him
at the Bijou, first row, centre. He stayed through two shows each time,
and before he had been there fifteen minutes Terry was conscious of him
through the back of her head. In fact I think that, in all innocence,
she rather played up to him. Orville Platt paid no more heed to the
stage, and what was occurring thereon, than if it had not been. He sat
looking at Terry, and waggling his head in time to the music. Not that
Terry was a beauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types.
That look of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear, smooth
skin contributed to it, and the natural pencilling of her eyebrows. But
the thing that accented it, and gave it a last touch, was the way in
which her black hair came down in a little point just in the centre of
her forehead, where hair meets brow. It grew to form what is known as a
cow-lick. (A prettier name for it is widow's peak.) Your eye lighted on
it, pleased, and from it travelled its gratified way down her white
temples, past her little ears, to the smooth black coil at the nape of
her neck. It was a trip that rested you.
At the end of the last performance on the second night of his visit to
the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begun to file out. Then
he leaned forward over the rail that separated orchestra from audience.
"Could you," he said, his tones dulcet, "could you oblige me with the
name of that last piece you played?"
Terry was stacking her music. "George!" she called, to the drum.
"Gentleman wants to know the name of that last piece." And prepared to
leave.
"'My Georgia Crackerjack'," said the laconic drum.
Orville Platt took a hasty side-step in the direction of the door toward
which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he said, fervently. "An
awful pretty thing. Thanks. It's beautiful."
Terry flung a last insult at him over her shoulder: "Don't thank _me_
for it. I didn't write it."
Orville Platt did not go across the street to the hotel. He wandered up
Cass street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of Main street, and down as
far as the park and back. "Pretty as a pink! And play!... And good, too.
Good."
A fat man in love.
At the end of six months they were married. Terry was surprised into it.
Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well.
For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his
wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had
sent her large boxes of stale drug-store chocolates, and called her
endearing names as they made cautious declaration such as:
"I've known a lot of girls, but you've got something different. I don't
know. You've got so much sense. A fellow can chum around with you.
Little pal."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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