American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories; Western stories
The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
eastern recitation-room the next morning, when Miss Kate, whose seat
was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,
affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of
Carry her neighbor. “HE has come,” she gasped in a thrilling whisper.
“Who?” asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly under stood when
Kate was in earnest. “Who?--why, the man who rescued us last night! I
saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak: I shall be better in
a moment--there!” she said; and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand
pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.
“What can he want?” asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited.
“I don't know,” said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism.
“Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his
young wife, and warn her against us.”
“He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,” rejoined
Addy thoughtfully.
“That was his art, you poor creature!” returned Kate scornfully. “You
can never tell any thing of these men, they are so deceitful Besides,
it's just my fate!”
“Why, Kate,” began Carry, in serious concern.
“Hush! Miss Walker is saying something,” said Kate, laughing.
“The young ladies will please give attention,” said a slow, perfunctory
voice. “Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor.”
Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the
somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the “reception parlor,” and
privately to the pupils as “purgatory.” His keen eyes had taken in the
various rigid details, from the flat steam “radiator,” like an
enormous japanned soda-cracker, that heated one end of the room, to the
monumental bust of Dr. Crammer, that hopelessly chilled the other;
from the Lord's Prayer, executed by a former writing-master in such
gratuitous variety of elegant calligraphic trifling as to considerably
abate the serious value of the composition, to three views of Genoa from
the Institute, which nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the
drawing-teacher; from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English
Letter, so gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human
interest, to a large photograph of the senior class, in which the
prettiest girls were Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on
each other's heads and shoulders. His fingers had turned listlessly the
leaves of school-catalogues, the “Sermons” of Dr. Crammer, the “Poems”
of Henry Kirke White, the “Lays of the Sanctuary” and “Lives of
Celebrated Women.” His fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had
gone over the partings and greetings that must have taken place here,
and wondered why the apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of
humanity; indeed, I am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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