The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
And this was all! Poor Matty copied it all, but all the
time she begged Mrs. Gilbert to tell her if there was not
some note-book or journal that would tell more. And kind
Mrs. Gilbert looked eagerly for what she called the
"Diry." At the proper dates on the cash-book, at
intervals of a week or two, Matty found similar entries--
the names of the two Spaniards appearing in all these--
but other names in place of Cole's just as Tom had told
her already. By the time she had copied all of these,
Mrs. Gilbert had found the "Diry." Eager, and yet heart-
sick, Matty turned it over with her old friend.
This was all:--
"Mr. Molyneux here. Very private. Papers in R. G. E."
And then followed a little burst of unintelligible
short-hand.
Poor Matty! She could not but feel that here would
not be evidence good for anything, even in a novel. But
she copied every word carefully, as a chief clerk's
daughter should do. She thanked the kind old lady, and
even kissed her. She looked at her watch. Heavens! how
fast time had gone! and the afternoons were so short!
"Yes, my dear Miss Molyneux; but they have turned, my
dear, the day is a little longer and a little lighter."
Did the old lady mean it for an omen, or was it only
one of those chattering remarks on meteors and weather
change of which old age is so fond? Matty wondered, but
did not know. Fast as she could, she tripped bravely on
to the avenue for her street car.
"The day is longer and lighter."
Meanwhile Tom was following his clue in the public
rooms at Willard's, to which, as he prophesied, Mr.
Greenhithe had returned after the unusual variation in
his life of a morning spent in the sanctuary. Tom bought
a copy of the Baltimore "The Sun," and went into one of
the larger rooms resorted to by travellers and loafers,
and sat down. But Mr. Greenhithe did not appear there.
Tom walked up and down through the passages a little
uneasily, for he was sure the ex-clerk had come into the
hotel. He went up and looked in at the ladies'
sitting-rooms, to see if perhaps some Duchess of
Devonshire, of high political circles, had found it worth
while to drag Mr. Greenhithe up there by a single hair.
No Mr. Greenhithe! Tom was forced to go down and drink
a glass of beer to see if Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty.
But at that moment, though Mr. Greenhithe was generally
thirsty in the middle of the day, and although many men
were thirsty at the time Tom hung over his glass of
lager, Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty there. It was only
as Tom passed the billiard-room that he saw Mr.
Greenhithe was playing a game of billiards, by way of
celebrating the new birth of a regenerated world.
What to do now! Tom could not, in common decency, go
in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke.
Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the
Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about. Tom
slowly withdrew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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