Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the one the
Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know whether she loved
Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She discussed this so interestingly
while she consumed tea and thin slices of bread that the Unicorn almost
lost his balance in leaning forward to listen. Her name was Marion
Cavendish and it was written over many photographs which stood in silver
frames in the lodger’s rooms. She used to make the tea herself, while
the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating way of doubling the
thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling at them like a mouse
at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little teeth and Cupid’s-bow
lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil only high enough for one
to see the two Cupid-bow lips. When she did that the American used to
laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, “Oh, I guess Reggie loves you
well enough.”
“But do I love Reggie?” she would ask sadly, with her tea-cup held
poised in air.
“I am sure I hope not,” the lodger would reply, and she would put down
the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over a beautiful picture,
and rise with great dignity and say, “if you talk like that I shall not
come again.”
She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her head would
be filled with more important matters than whether Reggie loved her or
not.
“But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just
at present,” she said. “If I don’t get a part soon,” she announced, “I
shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at evening
parties.”
“That seems a desperate revenge,” said the American; “and besides, I
don’t want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play Nancy.”
“I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy,” Miss Cavendish
answered.
They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that
his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must play
Nancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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