Married women -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
Arthur Twemlow's manner altered at once as he took Leonora's hand and
saw the sudden generous miracle which happened in her calm face when she
smiled. He was impressed by her beautiful maturity, by the elegance born
of a restrained but powerful instinct transmitted to her through
generations of ancestors. His respect for Meshach rose higher. And she,
as she faced the self-possessed admiration in Arthur's eyes, was
conscious of her finished beauty, even of the piquancy of the angle of
her hat, and the smooth immaculate whiteness of her gloves; and she was
proud, too, of Millicent's gracile, restless charm. They walked down the
steps side by side, Leonora in the middle, watched curiously from above
and below by little knots of people who still lingered in front of the
chapel.
'You soon got to work here, Mr. Twemlow,' said Leonora lightly.
He laughed. 'I guess you mean that collecting box. That was Mr. Myatt's
game. He didn't do me right, you know. He got me into his pew, and then
put the plate on to me.'
Leonora liked his Americanism of accent and phrase; it seemed romantic
to her; it seemed to signify the quick alertness, the vivacious and
surprising turns, of existence in New York, where the unexpected and
the extraordinary gave a zest to every day.
'Well, you collected perfectly,' she remarked.
'Oh, yes you did, really, Mr. Twemlow,' echoed Millicent.
'Did I?' he said, accepting the tribute with frank satisfaction. 'I used
to collect once at Talmage's Church in Brooklyn--you've heard Talmage
over here of course.' He faintly indicated contempt for Talmage. 'And
after my first collection he sent for me into the church parlour, and he
said to me: "Mr. Twemlow, next time you collect, put some snap into it;
don't go shuffling along as if you were dead." So you see this morning,
although I haven't collected for years, I thought of that and tried to
put some snap into it.'
Milly laughed obstreperously, Leonora smiled.
At the corner they could see Mrs. Burgess's carriage waiting at the
vestry door in Mount Street. The geologist, escorted by Harry Burgess,
got into the carriage, where Mrs. Burgess already sat; Harry followed
him, and the stately equipage drove off. Dr. Quain had married a cousin
of Mrs. Burgess's late husband, and he invariably stayed at her house.
All this had to be explained to Arthur Twemlow, who made a point of
being curious. By the time they had reached the top of Oldcastle Street,
Leonora felt an impulse to ask him without ceremony to walk up to
Hillport and have dinner with them. She knew that she and Milly were
pleasing him, and this assurance flattered her. But she could not summon
the enterprise necessary for such an unusual invitation; her lips would
not utter the words, she could not force them to utter the words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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