Bildungsromans; Domestic fiction; Middle West -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his tribe all right.
It's not only women who kowtow; when old man Merriman wants to know
for sure whether to pay a million for a cracked Chinese vase, he
always calls in Felix Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich,
that's one of his jobs! So you see," he came back to his first point,
"it must be some jolt for the sacred F.M. to have a young lady, _just
a young lady_, refuse to bow at the shrine. You couldn't have done a
smarter trick, by heck! I've been watching you all those weeks, just
too tickled for words. And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as
good as a play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss my
guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's just waiting
for a good chance to turn on the faucet and hand you a full cup of his
irresistible fascination." He added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and
down on the tense catgut of his racquet: "What all you girls see in
that old wolf-hound, to lose your heads over! It gets me!"
"Why in the world 'wolf-hound'?" asked Sylvia.
"Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, dignified,
deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes would be phosphorescent
at night too. They are that kind; don't you know, when you strike a
match in the evening, how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look
so soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards--no, Lord
no! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like any dog that ever
lived--first cousin to a fish, I should say."
Sylvia laughed. "Why not make it grizzly bear, to take in the rest of
the animal kingdom?"
"No," persisted Arnold. "Now I've thought of it, I _mean_ fish, a
great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep pool and won't rise to
any ordinary fly." He made a brain-jolting change of metaphor and went
on: "The plain truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a
big fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. It _has_
to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, and his tastes are
some--"
"Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," commented Sylvia
indifferently, as though tired of the subject. They were now at the
tennis-court. "Run over to the summer-house and get my racquet, will
you? It's on the bench."
"Yes, Molly's got plenty of _money_," Arnold admitted as he came
back, his accent implying some other lack which he forgot to mention,
absorbed as he at once became in coping with his adversary's strong,
swift serve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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