Social problems -- Fiction; Socialism -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
It was Katie Reilly, a bright little Irish damsel, the housekeeper's
sewing girl, who first captured Samuel with her smile; she carried him
off for a walk, in spite of the efforts of the second parlor maid, and
Samuel drank up eagerly the stream of gossip which poured from her lips.
Master Albert--that was what they all called him--was said to have an
income of over seven hundred thousand dollars a year. What he did with
such a sum no one could imagine; he had lived quite alone since his
father's death. The house had always been run by Miss Aurelia, old Mr.
Lockman's sister, a lady with the lumbago and a terrible temper; but she
had died a couple of years ago. Mr. Lockman had taken great interest
in his stock farm, but very little in his house; and Master Albert
took even less, spending most of his time in New York. Consequently
everything was at sixes and sevens, and he was being robbed most
terribly. But in spite of all his relatives' suggestions, he would not
have anyone to come and live with him.
Master Albert was still a minor, and his affairs were managed by Mr.
Hickman, the family lawyer, and also by his uncle, Mr. Wygant. The
latter was a manufacturer and capitalist--also a great scholar, so Katie
said. It was he Samuel had seen that afternoon in the automobile, a tall
and very proud-looking man with an iron-gray mustache. He lived in the
big white house just after you climbed the ridge; and Miss Gladys was
his only daughter. She had been old Mr. Lockman's favorite niece, and he
had left her a great deal of money. People were always planning a match
between her and Master Albert, but that always made Miss Gladys very
angry. They both declared they were not in love with each other, and
Katie was inclined to think this was true. Miss Gladys had been away to
a rich boarding school, and she wanted to visit some friends at
Newport; but her father wanted her to stay with him, and that made her
discontented. She was very beautiful, and everybody was her slave. “But
oh, I tell you, when she's angry!” said Katie with a shake of her head.
This little Irish girl was a rare find for Samuel, because her brother
was the “fellow” to Miss Gladys's maid, and so there was nothing she
could not tell Samuel about his divinity. He learned about Miss Gladys's
beautiful party dresses, and about her wonderful riding horse, and about
her skill at tennis, and even her fondness for chocolate fudge. Miss
Gladys had been to Paris the summer before; and her family had a camp in
the Adirondacks, and they went there every August in an automobile
and flew about on a mountain lake in a motor-boat the shape of a knife
blade. Katie wanted to talk about Samuel a part of the time, and even,
perhaps, about herself; but Samuel plied her with questions about Miss
Wygant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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