Ladies and GentlemenCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
Ladies and Gentlemen
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories, American
Numbers of friendly persons met Mr. Boyce-Upchurch at the boat that
Wednesday afternoon. Miss Titworthy inevitably was there and riding
herd, so to speak, on a swaying flock of ewes of the Ingleglade
Woman's Club. She organized a sort of impromptu welcoming committee at
the ferry-house. Mrs. Gridley missed this, though. She had to stay
outside with her runabout. Her husband and brother--the latter had
escorted Mr. Boyce-Upchurch to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street
from the University Club where he had been a guest of someone since
finishing his New England swing the week before--were with the visiting
celebrity. They surrendered him over to Miss Titworthy, who made him
run the gantlet of the double receiving line and introduced him to all
the ladies. Of these a bolder one would seek to detain him a minute
while she told him how much she admired his books and which one of them
she admired most, but an awed and timider one would merely say she was
_so_ glad to meet him, having heard of him _so_ often. Practically
every timider one said this. It was as though she followed a memorized
formula. Now and then was a bolder bold one who breasted forward at him
and cooed in the manner of a restrained but secretly amorous hen-pigeon.
Mr. Boyce-Upchurch bore up very well under the strain of it all.
Indeed, he seemed rather to expect it, having been in this country for
several months now and having lectured as far west as Omaha. He plowed
along between the greeters, a rather short and compact figure but very
dignified, with his monocle beaming ruddy in the rays of the late
afternoon sun and with a set smile on his face, and he murmuring the
conventional words.
The ceremonial being concluded, the two gentlemen reclaimed him and
led him outside, and there he met Mrs. Gridley, who drove him up the
Palisades Road, her husband and brother following in a chartered taxi
with Mr. Boyce-Upchurch's luggage. There was quite a good deal of
luggage, including a strapped steamer-rug and two very bulging, very
rugged-looking kit bags and a leather hat-box and a mysterious flat
package in paper wrappings which Mr. Braid told Mr. Gridley he was sure
must contain a framed steel engraving of the Death of Nelson.
Mr. Braid pattered on:
"For a truly great and towering giant of literature, our friend seems
very easy to control in money matters. Docile--that's the word for it,
docile. He let me tip the porter at the club for bringing down these
two tons of his detachable belongings, and on the way up Madison Avenue
he deigned to let me jump out and go in a shop and buy him an extra
strap for his blanket roll, and he graciously suffered me to pay for a
telegram he sent from the other side, and also for that shoe-shine and
those evening papers he got on the boat. Told me he hadn't learned to
distinguish our Yankee small change. Always getting the coins mixed up,
he said. Maybe he hasn't had any experience."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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