Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man — John Shaqi
Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle ManLewis, Sinclair
General
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
“Trouble? Nothing was the trouble. Except with old Goglefogle. I made
one little break in my accounts. Why, if old Gogie had to keep track of
seventy-’leven accounts and watch every single last movement of a fool
girl that can’t even run the adding-machine, why, he’d get green around
the gills. He’d never do anything _but_ make mistakes! Well, I guess
the old codger must have had a bum breakfast this morning. Wanted some
exercise to digest it. Me, I was the exercise—I was the goat. He calls
me in, and he calls me _down_, and me—well, just lemme tell you, Wrenn,
I calls his bluff!”
Charley Carpenter stopped his rapid tirade, delivered with quick
head-shakes like those of palsy, to raise his smelly cigarette to his
mouth. Midway in this slow gesture the memory of his wrongs again
overpowered him. He flung his right hand back on the table, scattering
cigarette ashes, jerked back his head with the irritated patience of a
nervous martyr, then waved both hands about spasmodically, while he
snarled, with his cheaply handsome smooth face more flushed than usual:
“Sure! You can just bet your bottom dollar I let him see from the way I
looked at him that I wasn’t going to stand for no more monkey business.
You bet I did!… I’ll fix him, I will. You just _watch_ me. (Hey,
Drubel, got any lemon merang? Bring me a hunk, will yuh?) Why, Wrenn,
that cross-eyed double-jointed fat old slob, I’ll slam him in the slats
so hard some day—I will, you just watch my smoke. If it wasn’t for that
messy wife of mine—I ought to desert her, and I will some day, and—”
“Yuh.” Mr. Wrenn was curt for a second…. “I know how it is, Charley.
But you’ll get over it, honest you will. Say, I’ve got some news. Some
land that my dad left me has sold for nearly a thousand plunks. By the
way, this lunch is on me. Let me pay for it, Charley.”
Charley promised to let him pay, quite readily. And, expanding, said:
“Great, Wrenn! Great! Lemme congratulate you. Don’t know anybody I’d
rather’ve had this happen to. You’re a meek little baa-lamb, but you’ve
got lots of stuff in you, old Wrennski. Oh say, by the way, could. you
let me have fifty cents till Saturday? Thanks. I’ll pay it back sure.
By golly! you’re the only man around the office that ’preciates what a
double duck-lined old fiend old Goglefogle is, the old—”
“Aw, gee, Charley, I wish you wouldn’t jump on Guilfogle so hard. He’s
always treated me square.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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