Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the HeroSmith, Francis Hopkinson
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Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero
Smith, Francis Hopkinson
Bank tellers -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
“It was very good of Mr. Grayson, Jack,” was all she said in answer, and
then relapsed into the apathy which had been hers since the hour when
the details of her husband's dishonesty had dropped from his lips.
Poor girl! she had no delusions to sustain her. She knew right from
wrong. Emotions never misled her. In her earlier years she and her
mother had been accustomed to look things squarely in the face, and
to work out their own careers; a game of chance, it is true, until her
mother's marriage with the elder Breen; but they had both been honest
careers, and they had owed no man a penny. Garry had fought the battle
for her within the last few years, and in return she had loved him as
much as she was able to love anybody but she had loved him as a man of
honor, not as a thief. Now he had lied to her, had refused to listen to
her pleadings, and the end had come. What was there left, and to whom
should she now turn--she without a penny to her name--except to her
stepfather, who had insulted and despised her. She had even been
compelled to seek help from Ruth and Jack; and now at last to accept it
from Mr. Grayson--he almost a stranger. These were the thoughts which,
like strange nightmares, swept across her tired brain, taking grewsome
shapes, each one more horrible than its predecessor.
At the funeral, next day, she presented the same impassive front. Breen
and her mother rode with her in the carriage to the church, and Jack and
Ruth helped her alight, but she might have been made of stone so far
as she evinced either sorrow or interest in what was taking place about
her. And yet nothing had been omitted by friend or foe expressive of the
grief and heart-felt sorrow the occasion demanded. Holker Morris sent a
wreath of roses with a special letter to her, expressing his confidence
in and respect for the man he had brought up from a boy. A committee was
present from the Society of Architects to which Garry belonged; half
a dozen of his old friends from the Magnolia were present, Biffy among
them; the village Council and the Board of Church Trustees came in a
body, and even McGowan felt it incumbent upon him to stand up during the
service and assume the air of one who had been especially bereft. Nor
were the notices in the country and city papers wanting in respect. “One
of our most distinguished citizens--a man who has reached the topmost
round of the ladder,” etc., etc., one editorial began.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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