Miss Dividends: A NovelGunter, Archibald Clavering
General
Miss Dividends: A Novel
Gunter, Archibald Clavering
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction
Next her voice grows haughty, and she says, coldly, "Stop!" for Ollie is
about to put his arm around her fairy waist. A second after, however,
she laughs again and says: "What nonsense! Good-night, Mr. Oliver," and
sweeps past him into her room, where, closing the door, Miss Changeable
suddenly cries: "If he had dared!" then mutters: "A few days ago I
looked upon his suit complacently and indifferently;" next pants: "Now
what is the matter with me? What kind of a railroad journey is it that
makes a girl--" and, checking herself here, cries: "Pshaw! what
nonsense!" and so goes to bed in the City of the Saints.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BALL IN SALT LAKE.
The next morning sleep leaves Erma, driven away by the singing of the
birds in the trees that front the hotel. A little time after, church
bells come to her ears, and she is astonished, and then remembers that
it is Sunday, and that there is a little Episcopal church on First South
Street that has come there with the railroad, and is permitted to exist
because United States troops are at Camp Douglas, just in the shadow of
the mountains, over which the sun is rising, and whose snowtops look
very cool and very pleasant here in the warmer valley, five thousand
feet below them.
Coming down stairs to a nine o'clock breakfast, she encounters Ferdie
and Louise at the table, for Mrs. Livingston and Oliver are later
risers. Over the meal, Mr. Chauncey, who has not been to the theatre
with them, but has been investigating the city, points out some of the
notables who are seated about the dining-room. Then he begins to run on
about what he has seen the evening before, telling them he has joined
the Salt Lake Billiard Club and paid twenty-five cents initiation fee to
register his name as a member of the club, in order to wield a cue,
which registry is kept by pasting a few sheets of paper each day upon a
roller, and has gradually rolled up until it has a diameter of five
feet, and contains the names of every man who has ever played a game of
billiards in Salt Lake City from the time Orson Pratt first spied out
the valley; for the Mormon authorities have refused to license billiard
tables, and a club was the only way in which they could be circumvented.
Next the boy excitedly tells them that he has been introduced to a
Mormon bishop in a barroom. At which Miss Livingston laughs: "He
couldn't have been much of a bishop to have been there."
"Wasn't he!" rejoins Ferdie indignantly. "He has four wives, two pairs
of sisters."
At which Louise gives an affrighted, "Oh!" and Miss Travenion says
sternly, "No more Mormon stories, please," for Mr. Chauncey is about to
run on about an apostle of the church who had married a mother and two
daughters.
But now the party are joined by Mrs. Livingston and Oliver, and shortly
after, the meal being finished, Mr. Livingston proposes church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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