Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Let me explain for you a little," she pleaded, "I am sorry that these
lawyer men do not understand. I know exactly how you happened to do
it. You didn't mean to take it at first, did you? I know because I
once took something that was not mine. It was food," she smiled a
little at the memory. "It did not seem like stealing because it was
just a little food. It just seemed like something I wanted and that I
must have and so I took it. Maybe that was the way it was with you
about 'The Magician.' It was something that you wanted and must have!
Perhaps it didn't seem like stealing because it was only something
that was written on a paper. It wasn't even like something you could
hold in your hand. It was just something somebody wrote down on some
pieces of paper. Maybe you didn't understand that it was all of her
hopes and dreams--"
"Gad! What a Sunday School you do keep!" he sneered. He tried to pass
her. He had jammed his hat back upon his head. Perhaps he would have
actually gotten away from her only that that was the moment that
Dulcie Dierckt opened the long French doors at the head of the little
outside stairway and motioned down the steps to the excited man who
was following her.
"There's Mr. Graemer," she said; "here's some one to see you," she
called wickedly, as she leaned across the balcony.
It was all over so quickly that afterward neither the Poetry Girl nor
the lawyer could tell how it happened. Dulcie could tell a little more
because she watched it from above.
Dudley Hamilt went down that narrow stairway in a sort of running
leap. He faced the agitated Mr. Graemer squarely but he gave him
something less than half a minute in which to defend himself. And then
he proceeded with a most satisfying thoroughness to pummel and pound
and thump. Their struggling figures shoved to and fro in the pebbled
paths. Janet and Molly O'Reilly ran screaming from their kitchen. The
Poetry Girl scrambled out of their way by jumping to an iron bench.
She dragged Felicia up after her.
"Stop them! Stop them!" shrieked the Poetry Girl.
But beside her Felicia clasping her little hands under her chin,
watched with shining eyes; her anger was as the anger of the man who
was fighting. She did not realize who he was or why he had come to the
defense of her Blythe. She only knew that he was doing exactly what
she had been longing to do ever since she had first heard about the
acquisitive Mr. Graemer. And when she heard Blythe Modder shouting
beside her she began to shout too. Only she did not entreat them to
stop fighting. A curious thrill of victory made her voice vibrant with
rapture.
"Do not stop striking him! Do not stop!"
And then suddenly, she saw to whom she was calling. And with her new
found joy in her heart she shouted still louder, "Strike him much,
much more, Dudley Hamilt!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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