Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"Loomis, Charles Battell
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Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"
Loomis, Charles Battell
Country life -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Married people -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
The dollars rained down. The wheel went round and a score of
anxious eyes blazed at the board. But every man lost his dollar
and the young man who had been so strangely lucky and so
curiously forgetful of his former luck, walked away, followed by
Hepburn, who had been in a brown study, and me.
“There’s only one man seems to win in those games of chance,”
said I.
“Some men are born lucky,” said Hepburn, and straightened
unconsciously as he said it.
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHERRY DISPOSES.
WE had had a merry lunch, we had watched the tests of the
draught cattle, we had all drunk pink lemonade and survived, and
now, by unanimous vote, we had decided to stay and have our
dinner in the “Mammoth Restaurant,” and go home by the light of
the golden hunter’s moon.
The wheel of fortune had been dismantled and the man who ran it
and the man who had been so lucky had gone off together. They
seemed to have struck up a friendship, and I am told that it not
unfrequently happens that lucky men and professional gamblers
make the rounds of the various county fairs and the luck of both
continues until the end of the season.
Sibthorp was not the life of the party at lunch, but Hepburn was
in high spirits.
I judged that Sibthorp had been tried and found wanting and that
Hepburn had been accounted worthy. Jack and Billy were their
usual irresponsible selves and Tom bubbled over with a merriment
that was at times elephantine but always genuine.
After lunch Sibthorp came to me and we strolled away naturally
and easily. I put on my best father confessor air and waited for
him to unbosom himself.
“It’s all over,” said he.
“What? You’ve asked her?”
“Yes.”
He looked so dejected that I grasped his hand.
“Maybe a cattle show was a poor place,” said I.
“I chose a poorer,” said he, “I asked her in the
merry-go-round.”
“Wha-at?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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