Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle ManLewis, Sinclair
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Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
Lewis, Sinclair
Courtship -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Middle-aged men -- United States -- Fiction
A slender girl of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, clad in a one-piece gown
of sage-green, its lines unbroken by either belt or collar-brooch,
fitting her as though it had been pasted on, and showing the long
beautiful sweep of her fragile thighs and long-curving breast. Her
collar, of the material of the dress, was so high that it touched her
delicate jaw, and it was set off only by a fine silver chain, with a La
Vallière of silver and carved Burmese jade. Her red hair, red as a
poinsettia, parted and drawn severely back, made a sweep about the fair
dead-white skin of her bored sensitive face. Bored blue-gray eyes, with
pathetic crescents of faintly violet-hued wrinkles beneath them, and a
scarce noticeable web of tinier wrinkles at the side. Thin long cheeks,
a delicate nose, and a straight strong mouth of thin but startlingly
red lips.
Such was the new patron of Mrs. Cattermole.
She stared about the tea-room like an officer inspecting raw recruits,
sniffed at the stare of the thin girl student, ordered breakfast in a
low voice, then languidly considered her toast and marmalade. Once she
glanced about the room. Her heavy brows were drawn close for a second,
making a deep-cleft wrinkle of ennui over her nose, and two little
indentations, like the impressions of a box corner, in her forehead
over her brows.
Mr. Wrenn’s gaze ran down the line of her bosom again, and he wondered
at her hands, which touched the heavy bread-and-butter knife as though
it were a fine-point pen. Long hands, colored like ivory; the joint
wrinkles etched into her skin; orange cigarette stains on the second
finger; the nails—
He stared at them. To himself he commented, “Gee! I never did see such
freak finger-nails in my life.” Instead of such smoothly rounded nails
as Theresa Zapp displayed, the new young lady had nails narrow and
sharp-pointed, the ends like little triangles of stiff white
writing-paper.
As she breakfasted she scanned Mr. Wrenn for a second. He was too
obviously caught staring to be able to drop his eyes. She studied him
all out, with almost as much interest as a policeman gives to a passing
trolley-car, yawned delicately, and forgot him.
Though you should penetrate Greenland or talk anarchism to the daughter
of a millionaire grocer, never shall you feel a more devouring chill
than enveloped Mr. Wrenn as the new young lady glanced away from him,
paid her check, rose slithily from her table, and departed. She rounded
his table; not stalking out of its way, as Theresa would have done, but
bending from the hips. Thus was it revealed to Mr. Wrenn that—
He was almost too horrified to put it into words…. He had noticed that
there was something kind of funny in regard to her waist; he had had an
impression of remarkably smooth waist curves and an unjagged sweep of
back. Now he saw that—It was unheard of; not at all like Lee Theresa
Zapp or ladies in the Subway. For—the freak girl wasn’t wearing
corsets!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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