City and town life -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy
or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
trouble.
“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she
hesitated--“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that
claim.”
“I'm afraid--” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you
understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
afforded it, which I really couldn't--I'm afraid I have nothing--quite
suitable--for evening wear.”
“You haven't!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don't know what is suitable
for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with
tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to
get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat
my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's
unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so
becoming. Come down just like you are.”
She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But
there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as
though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one
could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was
impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he
made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps
one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
“I'm afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I'm afraid that the
servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”
“Say,” he took her up, “let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their
mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the
footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their
funeral, anyhow.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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