Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
She was right. Grudgingly, slowly, he admitted it. Not only that, he
carried out her idea and perfected the spectacle contrivance as you know
it to-day. Without her suggestion it would have had a serious flaw. He
knew he ought to be grateful. He told himself that he was grateful. But
in reality he was resentful. She was a smart girl, but--well--a fella
didn't feel comfortable going with a girl that knew more than he did. He
took her to the theatre--it was before the motion picture had attained
its present-day virulence. She enjoyed it. So did he. Perhaps they might
have repeated the little festivity and the white shirtwaist might have
triumphed in the end. But that same week Raymond met Cora.
Though he had come to Chicago from Michigan almost a year before, he
knew few people. The Erwin H. Nagel Company kept him busy by day. The
Invention occupied him at night. He read, too, books on optometry. Don't
think that he was a Rollo. He wasn't. But he was naturally somewhat
shy, and further handicapped by an unusually tall lean frame which he
handled awkwardly. If you had a good look at his eyes you forgot his
shyness, his leanness, his awkwardness, his height. They were the
keynote of his gentle, studious, kindly, humorous nature. But Chicago,
Illinois, is too busy looking to see anything. Eyes are something you
see with, not into.
Two of the boys at Nagel's had an engagement for the evening with two
girls who were friends. On the afternoon of that day one of the boys
went home at four with a well-developed case of grippe. The other
approached Raymond with his plea.
"Say, Atwater, help me out, will you? I can't reach my girl because
she's downtown somewheres for the afternoon with Cora. That's her girl
friend. And me and Harvey was to meet 'em for dinner, see? And a show.
I'm in a hole. Help me out, will you? Go along and fuss Cora. She's a
nice girl. Pretty, too, Cora is. Will you, Ray? Huh?"
Ray went. By nine-thirty that evening he had told Cora about the
Invention. And Cora had turned sidewise in her seat next to him at the
theatre and had looked up at him adoringly, awe-struck. "Why, how
perfectly _wonderful_! I don't see how you think of such things."
"Oh, that's nothing. I got a lot of ideas. Things I'm going to work out.
Say, I won't always be plugging down at Nagel's, believe me. I got a
lot of ideas."
"Really! Why, you're an inventor, aren't you! Like Edison and those. My,
it must be wonderful to think of things out of your head. Things that
nobody's ever thought of before."
Ray glowed. He felt comfortable, and soothed, and relaxed and
stimulated. And too large for his clothes. "Oh, I don't know. I just
think of things. That's all there is to it. That's nothing."
"Oh, isn't it! No, I guess not. I've never been out with a real inventor
before ... I bet you think I'm a silly little thing."
He protested, stoutly. "I should say not." A thought struck him. "Do you
do anything? Work downtown somewheres, or anything?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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