Americans -- England -- Fiction; Children of the rich -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction
Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him. The lady, who was
speaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy men, and
had an ill-tempered expression. She always gave a wide berth to a man
who looked nasty-tempered. One or two other persons who had spoken of
him had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguely
unpromising information. The episode of G. Selden had been interesting
enough, with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations.
Betty's touch had made the junior salesman attracting. It was a good
type this, of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements of
a hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, and
found healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall bedroom. He had
consented to Betty's request that he would see him, partly because he
was inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason which
Betty did not suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount
Dunstan and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had liked
what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a personality
so singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the
junior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father with
a daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, common
young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the
effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was
unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how, after
he had overcome his visitor's first awkwardness--if he chanced to be
self-conscious--he could lead him to talk. What he hoped to do was to
make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to
Betty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view. Young men
of his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things they
liked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack
of it, without absolute intention or actual statement. Being elemental
and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice
and modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount
Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of
unawareness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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