The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban LifeBangs, John Kendrick
General
The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life
Bangs, John Kendrick
City and town life -- Fiction; Suburban life -- Fiction
"What is this?" he said, as he opened the note that was addressed to
him. "Humph! Mrs. Hubbard's boy is sick--"
"Must you go?" Molly asked.
"I suppose so," said Walter. "I saw him this afternoon, and there is not
the slightest thing the matter with him, but I must go."
"Why?" asked Molly. "Are you the kind of doctor they call in when
there's nothing the matter?"
She did not mean to be sarcastic, but she seemed to be, and Walter, of
course, like a properly sensitive soul, was hurt.
"I must go," he said, positively, ignoring the thrust.
"But you say there is nothing the matter with the boy," suggested Molly.
"I'm going just the same," said Walter, and he went.
Molly played on at the piano until she heard the front door slam, and
then she rose up and went to the window. Walter had gone and was out of
sight. Then, sad to say, she became philosophical. It doesn't really pay
for girls to become philosophical, but Molly did not know that, and she
began a course of reasoning.
"He knows he isn't needed, but he goes," she said to herself, as she
gazed dejectedly out of the window at the gaslamps on the other side of
the street. "And he will of course charge the Hubbards for his services,
admitting, however, that his services are nothing. That is not
conscientious--it is not professional. He is not practising for the love
of his profession, but for the love of money. I am disappointed in
him--and we were having such a pleasant time, too!"
So she ran on as she sat there in the window-seat looking out upon the
dreary street; and you may be sure that the commingling of her ideals
and her disappointments and her sense of loneliness did not help
Walter's case in the least, and that when they met the next time her
manner towards him was what some persons term "sniffy," which was a
manner Walter could not and would not abide. Hence a marked coolness
arose between the two, which by degrees became so intensified that at
about the time when Mrs. Upton was expected to be called in to assist at
a wedding, she was stunned by the information that "all was over between
them." "Just think of that, Henry," the good match-maker cried,
wrathfully. "All is over between them, and Molly pretends she is glad of
it."
"Made for each other too!" ejaculated Upton, with a mock air of sorrow.
"What was the matter?"
"I can't make out exactly," observed Mrs. Upton. "Molly told me all
about it, and it struck me as a merely silly lovers' quarrel, but she
won't hear of a reconciliation. She says she finds she was mistaken in
him. I wish you'd find out Walter's version of it."
"I respectfully refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton," returned Henry. "I'm not a
partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on
your hands it is your lookout, not mine. Pity, isn't it, that you can't
manage matters like a tailor? Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it
on, don't like it, send it back and have it changed to fit. If you could
make a few alterations now in Molly--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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