The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of LifeLewis, Sinclair
General
The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
Lewis, Sinclair
City and town life -- Fiction; Minnesota -- Fiction
An insurance adjuster, who was a frat-brother to Carl and Ray, though
he came from Melanchthon College. A young lawyer, ever so jolly, with
a banjo. A bantling clergyman, who was spoken of with masculine
approval because he smoked a pipe and said charmingly naughty things.
Johnson of the Homes and Long Island Real Estate Company, and his
brother, of the Martinhurst Development Company. Four older men,
ranging from thin-haired to very bald, who had come with their wives
and secretly looked at their watches while they talked brightly with
one another's wives. Five young men whom Carl could not tell apart, as
they all had smooth hair and eye-glasses and smart dress-shirts and
obliging smiles and complimentary references to his aviating. He gave
up trying to remember which was which.
It was equally hard to remember which of the women Gertie knew as a
result of her girlhood visit to New York, which from their membership
in St. Orgul's Church, which from their relation to Minnesota. They
all sat in rows on couches and chairs and called him "You wicked man!"
for reasons none too clear to him. He finally fled from them and
joined the group of young men, who showed an ill-bred and disapproved
tendency to sneak off into Ray's room for a smoke. He did not,
however, escape one young woman who stood out from the _mêlée_--a
young woman with a personality almost as remarkable as that of the
glorious creature from London, Nebraska. This was the more or less
married young woman named Dorothy, and affectionately called
"Tottykins" by all the St. Orgul's group. She was of the kind who look
at men appraisingly, and expect them to come up, be unduly familiar,
and be crushed. She had seven distinct methods of getting men to say
indiscreet things, and three variations of reply, of which the
favorite was to remark with well-bred calmness: "I'm afraid you have
made a slight error, Mr. Uh---- I didn't quite catch your name?
Perhaps they failed to tell you that I attend St. Orgul's evvvv'ry
Sunday, and have a husband and child, and am not at all, really, you
know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the
idea that I have been looking for a flirtation."
A thin, small female with bobbed hair was Tottykins, who kept her
large husband and her fat, white grub of an infant somewhere in the
back blocks. She fingered a long, gold, religious chain with her
square, stubby hand, while she gazed into men's eyes with what she
privately termed "daring frankness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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