Civil engineers -- Fiction; Ethics -- Fiction; Love stories; West (U.S.) -- Fiction
That reason began to define itself when, at the corner beyond the St.
Nicholas, he turned to the left and walked rapidly in a direction
precisely opposite to that in which the home suburb lay. Down to the
railroad yards and across the tracks he fared, turning presently from
the main street into another which led to a region called “Judsontown,”
taking its name from the Judson Foundries and housing the major portion
of Judson’s workmen.
At the gate of a cottage a trifle larger and more commodious than its
neighbors on either hand, David turned in and walked up the slag-paved
path to the porch. There was a light turned low in one room of the
cottage, but no other signs of life. But at his approach there was a
rustle of modish skirts on the porch and a vision appeared; the vision
taking the form of a strikingly handsome young woman, round limbed,
scarlet-lipped, with midnight eyes and hair. The light from the near-by
street lamp framed her in the porch opening for David as he swung up
the path, and it was a picture to stir the blood in the veins of an
anchorite.
“Gloriana!” he said, taking both of her hands, and giving her the name
she had given herself as soon as she was old enough to hate the one her
parents had given her.
“Davie! you’ve come at last, have you?” she breathed. “’Tis long ago
I’d given you up. A week you’ve been back, and but for the papers I’d
never have known it!”
“Don’t scold me, Glo,” he begged. “If you could only know how busy I’ve
been. This is the first spare minute I’ve had in the week, honestly.
Where are your father and mother?”
“They’ve gone up-town to the movie. You’ll be coming in?”
“Just for a little while.”
She led the way into the cottage, into the room of the dimmed light.
It was exactly as David remembered it from a time when he had often
been made at home in it; the big-figured red carpet, the marble-topped
center table with the family Bible, the family photograph album, and a
crocheted mat in the middle for the foot of an ornate parlor lamp with
a crimson shade. Also, there were the same stiff-backed chairs and the
same sofa upholstered in green rep. In one corner was the young woman’s
piano. John Fallon was a foreman in the Judson Foundries and could well
afford to buy his daughter a piano, if he chose. David sat down on one
of the uncomfortable chairs.
“Turn up the light and let me see you, Glo,” he said, and when she did
it: “Jove! but you picked the right name for yourself years ago when we
were kiddies! The movie stars have nothing on you--not one of them.”
“Flatterer!” she laughed, and if there were a faint suggestion of the
“h” after the “t’s” he did not mind. Her Irish accent had always seemed
to harmonize perfectly with her rich, “black-Irish” beauty. Then:
“The two years have been making you into a man, Davie. ’Twas in your
letters when I’d be reading them. Don’t be propping yourself on that
chair; come over here and be yourself.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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