Miss Dividends: A NovelGunter, Archibald Clavering
General
Miss Dividends: A Novel
Gunter, Archibald Clavering
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction
As she comes out of Wells, Fargo's, having finished her business with
the express company--which has taken some five minutes, the transaction
being a heavy one, and the receipt very formal--Lawrence, with rapture
in his heart, and love in his eye, approaches to speak to his divinity,
and to his intense chagrin, gets the very neatest kind of a cut. The
girl looks him straight in the face--with haughty eyes that never
flinch, though there is no recognition in them.
So passing on her way, she buys her tickets, and makes arrangements for
her sleeping-car.
This catastrophe has been brought about as follows: While standing
waiting for the receipt from Wells, Fargo & Co., Erma has caught the
conversation of two men who are standing just outside its door.
One of them says: "Who is she?" for Miss Travenion's beauty has
attracted his attention.
The other, a mining man who has seen her with the bishop in Eureka,
answers: "Tranyon the boss Mormon's daughter."
"Impossible!"
"Fact, I assure you," laughs the second man. "From the airs she puts on,
you'd think she was a New York or St. Louis belle. But I believe she's
booked for the seventh wife of old Kruger. These Mormon girls have no
brains! I guess readin', writin', an' 'rithmetic's about the extent of
her education."
This decidedly slurring description of the belle of Newport's last
season makes the girl think every one despises her; and seeing Lawrence,
and remembering his desertion, she sighs: "He despises me also--but he
shall never show it to me--NEVER!" And so passes him as if she had never
seen him.
Striving to eat, but finding she has no appetite, Erma goes almost
timidly to the train, where she has engaged a stateroom, for she thinks
the whole world is talking about her father and herself, in about the
same language she has heard, and shrinks from public gaze and public
scoff. She is happy to get to the privacy of her stateroom
unnoticed--which is not difficult, every one about the station being
excited and busy.
The snow is still falling heavily on the tracks, and the Central Pacific
is behind time. Finally, getting a telegram that the train on the more
western road has been detained by snow on the Sierra Nevada and Pequop
Mountains, and is ten hours late, the Union Pacific pulls out of the
station, one hour behind its time.
Just then the privacy of Miss Travenion's stateroom is invaded by Buck
Powers, on his business tour through the train.
He says in resonant voice: "How are you off for peanuts? They're the
only fruit that's in season now."
"I don't wish any," she replies, quietly.
"Won't you have some candy, or chewing gum? You look as if you needed
somethin'."
Seeing this is declined by a shake of the head, he suggests: "That fire
must have given you the blues, like it did me."
"What do you mean?" asks Erma, a little startled.
"Why," cries Buck, "don't you know it's been burnt down six weeks? There
ain't no Chicago, but it made the highest old fire the world has ever
seen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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