Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriageOnions, Oliver
General
Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage
Onions, Oliver
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
Now it was curious that Dorothy had just been thinking about Mr.
Miller. Mr. Miller was Hallowells' Publicity Manager, and the time had
been when Dorothy had had Mr. Miller completely in her pocket. She
had obtained that comfortable contract of hers from Mr. Miller, and
if during the latter part of its continuance she had taken her duties
somewhat lightly and her pleasures with enormous gusto, she was not
sure that Mr. Miller had not done something of the same kind. But the
firm, which could excuse itself from a renewal of her own contract, for
some reason or other could not get rid of Mr. Miller; and now here was
Mr. Miller unexpectedly in Dorothy's flat--seeking her, which is far
better for you than when you have to do the seeking. He stood there
with his grey Trilby in his hand and his tailor-made deltoids almost
filling the aperture of the doorway.
"There, now, if I wasn't right!" said Mr. Miller with great
satisfaction, advancing with one hand outstretched. "I fixed it all up
with myself coming along that you'd be around the house. I've had no
luck all the week, and I said to myself as I got out of the el'vator
at Belsize Park, 'It's doo to change.' And here I find you, right on
the spot. I hope this is not an introosion. How are you? And how's Mr.
Stan?"
He shook hands heartily with Dorothy, and looked round for a place in
which to put his hat and stick.
"Why, now, this is comfortable," he went on, drawing up the chair to
which Dorothy pointed. "I like your English fires. They may not have
all the advantages of steam-heat, but they got a look about 'em--the
Home-Idee. And you're looking just about right in health, Mrs. Tasker,
if I may say so. You English women have our N'York ladies whipped when
it comes to complexion, you have for sure. And how's the family----?"
But here Mr. Miller suddenly stopped and looked at Dorothy again.
If the look that came into his eyes had come into those of a young
unmarried woman, Dorothy would have fled there and then. He dropped his
head for a moment as people do who enter a church; then he raised it
again.
"If you'll pardon an old married man and the father of three little
goils," Mr. Miller said, his eyes reverently lifted and his voice
suddenly altered, "--but am I right in supposing that ... another
little gift from the storks, as my dear old Mamie--that was my dear old
negro nurse--used to say?" Then, without waiting for the unrequired
answer, he straightened his back and squared his deltoids in a way that
would have made any of Holbein's portraits of Henry the Eighth look
like that of a slender young man. His voice dropped three whole tones,
and again he showed Dorothy the little bald spot on the crown of his
head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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