Husband and wife -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
"Well, then, if you’re looking for a place—"
"I can’t say that I’m that."
"Or if you should be, I’ve given Harry Drinkwater a very good address."
It was only a rooming-house, she explained to me, but for active people
the more convenient for that, and with lots of good cafés in the
neighborhood. She told me of one in particular—Alfonso was the name of
the restaurateur—where one could get a very good dinner, with wine, for
seventy-five cents, and an adequate breakfast for forty. Moreover, Miss
Blair had long known the lady who kept the rooming-house in question, a
friend of her mother’s she happened to be, and any one whom she, Lydia
Blair, sent with her recommendation would find the place O.K.
I was terrified. I didn’t mean to go to this well-situated dwelling,
"rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street; I only had visions of being
wafted there against my will. So much had happened in which my will had
not been consulted that I was afraid of the kindliest of intentions.
When at dinner that evening Miss Mulberry apologized across the table
for her coldness toward me during the trip, ascribing it to a
peculiarity of hers in never making gentlemen friends till sure they
were gentlemen, and offering me her permanent address, I resolved that
after that meal none of the whole group should catch another glimpse of
me.
For this reason I escaped to my cabin directly after dinner, packed my
humble belongings, and went to bed. When, toward eleven, Drinkwater
came down, putting the question, as he stumbled in, "’Sleep, Jasper?" I
replied with a faint snore. For the last two or three days he had been
scattering Jaspers throughout his sentences, and I only didn’t ask him
to give up the practice because of knowing that with men of his class
familiarity is a habit. Besides, it would be all over in a few days, so
that I might as well take it patiently.
And yet I was sorry that it had to be so, for something had made me like
him. During the days of the equinoctial bad weather it had fallen to me
to steer him about the staggering ship, and one is naturally drawn to
anything helpless. Then, too, of all the men to whom I ever lent a hand
he was the most demonstrative. He had a boy’s way of pawing you, of
sprawling over you, of giving your hand little twitches, or affectionate
squeezes to your arm. There was no liberty he wouldn’t take; but when
he took them they didn’t seem to be liberties. If I betrayed a hint of
annoyance he would pat me on any part of my person he happened to touch,
with some such soothing words as:
"There, there, poor ’ittle Jasper! Let him come to his muvverums and
have his ’ittle cry."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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