City and town life -- Fiction; Country life -- Fiction
“Be sure to look us up when you come to the city.”
This invitation was extended with that delightful affectation of
heartiness that a man can assume when he believes that the person
invited will never avail himself of the courtesy. Fortunately for the
purpose of this story, Master Philip Hayn, whom Mr. Tramlay had asked to
call, was too young and too unaccustomed to the usages of polite society
to regard the remark in any but its actual sense.
It would have seemed odd to any one knowing the two men and their
respective stations in life. Tramlay was a New York merchant, well known
and of fair standing in the iron trade; Hayn was son of the farmer at
whose house the Tramlay family had passed the summer. When the Tramlays
determined to exchange the late summer dust of the country for the early
autumn dust of the city, it was Philip who drove the old-fashioned
carryall that transported them from the farm to the railway-station. The
head of the merchant’s family was attired like a well-to-do
business-man; Philip’s coat, vest, and trousers were remnants of three
different suits, none of recent cut. The contrast was made sharper by
the easy condescension of the older man and the rather awkward deference
of Philip, and it moved Mrs. Tramlay to whisper, as her husband helped
her aboard the train,--
“Suppose he were to take you at your word, Edgar?”
The merchant shrugged his shoulders slightly, and replied, “Worse men
have called upon us, my dear, without being made to feel unwelcome.”
“I think ’twould be loads of fun,” remarked Miss Lucia Tramlay.
Then the three, followed by smaller members of the family, occupied as
many seats near windows, and nodded smiling adieus as the train started.
Philip returned their salutations, except the smiles: somehow, the
departure of all these people made him feel sober. He followed the train
with his eyes until it was out of sight; then he stepped into the old
carryall and drove briskly homeward, declining to rein up and converse
with the several sidewalk-loungers who manifested a willingness to
converse about the departed guests. When he reached the outer edge of
the little village he allowed the horses to relapse into their normal
gait, which was a slow walk; he let the reins hang loosely, he leaned
forward until his elbows rested upon his knees and his hat-brim seemed
inclined to scrape acquaintance with the dash-board, then he slowly
repeated,--
“‘Be sure to look us up when you come to the city.’ You may be sure that
I will.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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