Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of AlternativesMoore, Frank Frankfort
General
Priscilla and Charybdis: A Story of Alternatives
Moore, Frank Frankfort
Fiction
“Then I shall have made a man of him,” was the clarion sound that rang
in her ears. That was to be her reward; the reflection that she had
accomplished this--the sense of her own influence upon the life of a
man. She felt at that moment that she wanted nothing more. Her woman’s
instinct to be a maker of men was satisfied.
She remained in her seat for several minutes, while the crowd who had
been watching the set melted away, or hung about the chairs with their
comments. She listened while some asked what on earth had come over
Glenister, and others what the mischief had come over Wingfield. How
did it come that Wingfield had just managed to nip his set away from
Paisley, who was practically an outsider, and then had licked Glenister,
who had been runner-up for the cup last year, into blue fits? That was
what they all wanted badly to know; and that was just what the young
woman with the lace sunshade and the beautifully made dress could have
told them.
But they did not address their questions to her; and when the talk about
the match that had just finished melted into talk about the two players
who had just taken possession of the court, she got upon her feet and
walked away--straight away from all the play and from the ground and
from the man.
She drove to the farm, took off her beautiful dress and hung it up, and
laid away the lace sunshade, and, putting on her working overall, spent
the rest of the day in the dairy, among her lactometers and test tubes.
Yes, she found that she had been quite right: the four new Jerseys were
more than justifying the records of the stud book.
She reflected with satisfaction upon the circumstance that her father
had bought them on her advice. His judgment as to the look of the beasts
bore out all that her scientific research had made plain.
CHAPTER XIII
His mother, though not an invalid, had need to be very careful as to
her health. Undoubtedly she had been better since she had come to the
Manor than she had been for years; but it so happened that she had not
felt well enough to go with her son Jack to the opening day of the Lawn
Tennis meeting. She easily submitted to his injunction to remain in her
chair on the terrace. The great magnolia that would make the whole side
of the house so glorious in another month, was not yet in bloom, but a
couple of old-fashioned climbing roses had worked their way round the
angle of the wall and laid out fantastic arms heavy with blooms over the
trellis, and Mrs. Wingfield loved roses of all sorts, and nightingales
and all the other old-fashioned things of the English garden. She was
quite content with her surroundings and her canopy and her pavement on
this J une day, and felt confident that her son’s assurance that she
would enjoy her day very much more as he arranged it for her, than if
she were to join the giddy throng in watching him knock the balls about,
was well founded. He had settled her in her chair and exclaimed:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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