The Nest Builder: A NovelHale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson
General
The Nest Builder: A Novel
Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson
Marriage -- Fiction
The office to which she was bound was on the north side of Union Square.
Crossing Broadway, she was held up half way over by the traffic. As she
waited for an opening her attention was attracted by the singular antics
of a large man, who seemed to be performing some kind of a ponderous
fling upon the curbstone opposite. A moment more and she grasped that
the dance was a signal to her, and that the man was none other than
McEwan, sprucely tailored and trimmed in the American fashion, but
unmistakable for all that. She crossed the street and shook hands with
him warmly, delighted to see any one connected with the romantic days of
her voyage. McEwan's smile seemed to buttress his whole face with teeth,
but to her amazement he greeted her without a trace of Scotch accent.
“Well,” said he, pumping both her hands up and down in his enormous
fist, “here's Mrs. Byrd! That's simply great. I've been wondering where
I could locate you both. Ought to have nosed you out before now, but
my job keeps me busy. I'm with a magazine house, you know--advertising
manager.”
“I didn't know,” answered Mary, whose head was whirling.
“Ah,” he grinned at her, “you're surprised at my metamorphosis. I allow
myself a month every year of my native heath, heather-mixture, and
burr--I like to do the thing up brown. The rest of the time I'm a
Gothamite, of necessity. Some time, when I've made my pile, I shall
revert for keeps, and settle down into a kilt and a castle.”
Much amused by this unsuspected histrionic gift, Mary walked on beside
McEwan. He was full of interest in her affairs, and she soon confided to
him the object of her expedition.
“You're just the man to advise me, being on a paper,” she said, and
added laughing, “I should have been terrified of you if I'd known that
on the ship.”
“Then I'm glad I kept it dark. You say your stuff is for children? Where
were you going to?”
She told him.
“A woman's the boss of that shop. She's O.K. and so's her paper, but her
prices aren't high.” He considered. “Better come to our shop. We run two
monthlies and a weekly, one critical, one household, one entirely
for children. The boss is a great pal of mine. Name of Farraday--an
American. Come on!” And he wheeled her abruptly back the way they had
come. She followed unresistingly, intensely amused at his quick, jerky
sentences and crisp manner--the very antithesis of his former Scottish
heaviness.
“Mr. McEwan, what an actor you would have made!”
She smiled up at him as she hurried at his side. He looked about with
pretended caution, then stooped to her ear.
“Hoots, lassie!” he whispered, with a solemn wink.
“Stefan will never believe this!” she said, bubbling with laughter.
At the door of a building close to the corner where they had met he
stopped, and for a moment his manner, though not his voice, assumed its
erstwhile weightiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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